Freedom to what, in this context?
> If businesses have to compete, they'll try to make things as nice as possible for the workers.
This is the "capitalism will solve it" argument which proved so untrue we passed the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Employment Act. It turns out that, no, even when it's economically obvious that catering to a minority population would be valuable, you can have 100% of a town refusing to do so because racism is more important to them than money. That creates entire regions of the country that are no-go zones if your skin color is wrong, and we decided that's not acceptable.
> There is no reason that by abandoning some law from the 50 years ago, the economy would fall back to the state of the 80ies.
I'm not concerned about what the economy would do; I'm concerned about whether it would be harder to keep a job free of daily torment if you're the wrong skin color than it is now. My mistake; the law in question isn't 50 years old, it's a 1970s law.
> I'm too lazy to look it up, but I keep hearing that in the old days, people could afford to buy houses and feed a family on a single salary.
If you can find some evidence that the passage of the ERA modified that, feel free to present it. But I'm pretty sure to explain why that changed, you're looking for Reagan-era deregulation (and the economic shift from a manufacturing economy, where unions were strong, to a service economy, where few unions existed).
> You have never heard an explanation because you have never looked for it or listened to one, not because none exist.
Interesting and unsupported hypothesis. But I don't expect you to bring me anything new because you've already declared you're "too lazy to look it up," so I think this conversation thread has ended.