What do you think the best decade in US history was?

[Bonzi]

Based on financial and societal factors, although none were perfect, which was the best decade, and why?

Do you see another decade like our best in the future?

 

[fncceo]

This one ... for me.

 

[Two Thumbs]

20's and RR's 80's

and the 70's

and is 1770's

 

[midcan5]

America's best years were from the defeat of Germany and Japan till the eighties in my readings. Certain historians call this the golden years, America helped rebuild and made attempts at equality and a sharing of that fictional pie. America invested in infrastructure as Eisenhower's highway system showed, taxes were highest on those who benefited the most, and Unions and corporations supported America and not just the bottom line. What happened? The book quoted below helps.

"A great transformation of American politics began during the years that Ronald Reagan was in the White House. This might not, at first, have appeared the likely outcome of his two administrations. Conservative activists (the same ones who would in later years celebrate Reagan as a saint) struggled during the 1980s with various disappointments: as president, Reagan did not end abortion, he met with Soviet leader Mikhail Corbachev, and he failed to eliminate the welfare state or even notably shrink government bureaucracies. And the enthusiasm within the business community that followed his election did not last long, as the economy sank into a deep recession, with unemployment rising to nearly 10 percent in 1982. As the manufacturing belt began to rust over, political conflicts between industrial companies desperately seeking subsidies and protection and those businesses that were able to thrive in global free markets grew more heated and intense. Tensions erupted between the owners of stock - newly confident and aggressive about using their financial power to compel management to do anything to raise returns - and career corporate executives. Today, the economic changes that began during the 1980s have an air of inevitability about them - the advent of globalization, the shift to a service economy. But at the time these transformations proved devastating to many of the manufacturing companies that had once most vociferously protested the New Deal.

And yet over the course of the decade the old skepticism toward business that had been born in the Great Depression and reawakened for a new generation in the Vietnam era finally began to disappear. The economic transformations of the decade would be interpreted through the framework of the free market vision. The 1970s campaigns to revive the image of capitalism among college students bore fruit in the 1980s. Universities created new centers for the study of business themes such as entrepreneurship. Students in Free Enterprise, a group started in 1975 to bring students together to "discuss what they might do to counteract the stultifying criticism of American business," thrived on small college campuses, funded by companies like Coors, Dow Chemical, and Walmart (as well as the Business Roundtable). The group organized battles of the bands, at which prizes would be doled out to the best pro-business rock anthems, helped silkscreen T-shirts with pro-capitalist messages, and created skits based on Milton Friedman's writings, which college students would perform in local elementary schools. In the workplace, the decline of the old manufacturing cities of [he North and Midwest and the rise of the sprawling suburbs of the Sunbelt metropolises marked the rise of a new economic culture, dominated by companies such as Walmart and Home Depot and Barnes & Noble." Kim Phillips-Fein ('Invisible Hands')

PS we've done quite well starting out from nothing, so yes all these past decades have been great.

.

 

[playtime]

the 1960s. people found a voice & societies' 'norms' were tested & expanded. people didn't feel the need to live in a preconceived role that was given to them. the nation was prosperous (as a whole & generally speaking) & the music that came out of that decade will never be matched.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Let the one right now be the best

 

[Bonzi]

Financially, the 50s seemed good.
I personally loved the 80s, but I was young the too

 

[regent]

Perhaps the best years are an era we lived lived through? In any case, I think America's best years were during the Thirties and Forties. The greatest economic depression ever, the greatest war ever and changes to our way of life that allowed America to contend with those problems and retain many of the solutions that are now part of America.

 

[Unkotare]

Always the current one. The next decade will be too.