Hacker News Reader

Comment by csallen | Hacker News Reader

Could someone replicate this feat by creating a "WTF Happened in 19XX" website for any year in the 20th century, then combing through thousands of charts and graphs, and picking only the ones where there was a change in 19XX? Or was 1971 truly a special year?

View on HN

Looks like among other things this one is leaning on a lot of economic trends that started in the 80s and hoping if you draw an arrow to the 70s no one will notice.

Most economists date the big breakdown in real gdp vs real median wages to have started in the 80s.

It's not exactly what you're suggesting, but Spurious Correlations is great fun: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

If you limit the analysis to the context of the USA then it’s definitely true that some years are more consequential than others. 2007 was more consequential than 2002, even though there were huge geopolitical machinations ongoing in 02. I imagine this discourse would turn into a “well actually” circus though lol

This author didn't even pick ones where there was a change in 1971. A lot of them have an arrow pointing to nothing special.

What is definitely true that there are many, significant indicators which see similar behavior.

The website mainly lists economic factors, but if you look at obesity rates you see a similar trend in the 70s, where quite suddenly obesity rates start rising.

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/1/73

I think that while there might not be a single common cause, it would be naive to deny that there could be a combination of events, which mark that time period in particular.

The divorce of wages and productivity is real. You can pick any year in the last 40 and the trend will be very evident.

I'm actually curious if this continues through he 2020s. It could have gotten worse or better or been the yardstick by which people were fired or hired.

Considering the number of graphs on this website where it's immediately clear that 1971 wasn't the inflection point (in many cases, it's actually around 1980), it's not hard to make this for any other year, especially if you don't care to make it all that convincing.

What makes 1971 truly special is that only goldbugs who really want the gold standard again are insane enough to believe that deviation from the gold standard single-handedly fucked over everything and have the chutzpah to tell you about it even when their own evidence clearly says they're wrong.

I mean, the whole point of the site is to highlight what the Nixon shock left in its wake since 1971. It truly was special in that regard.

I'd highly recommend reading the book "Broken Money" by Lyn Alden for understanding the dynamics of what played out.

I'm not from the US but I looked up the presidents from that era and found that there's a period from 1969 to 1993, starting with Nixon, where the only Democratic term was Jimmy Carter. Twenty years of Republicanism and 4 years of Democraticism! The best us Brits could muster is 18 years of Conservatism between 1979 and 1997. Don't get me wrong though, we've managed to destroy our economy just as badly.

Congress was entirely controlled by Democrats for longer than that, I think 1956 to 1994. The US has liked divided government for a long time.

Wow, and Democrats controlled both houses for the entirety of Nixon's term. He must have been quite a diplomat for all his shortcomings. Makes sense why a lot of his key acts were actually quite progressive for the environment and workers' rights. I had it in my head that the US system allowed for more executive power than the UK's, but I guess it really depends on the outcomes of lots of different elections.

It was special in some respects, namely it marked the end of the gold standard in the US, which likely had an impact on many of the charts on the website. Undoubtedly other things happened during the 70s which also impacted on those charts but the quote at the end demonstrates that the gold standard is clearly what the website is trying to bring attention to.

But I think you are also likely correct that one could create a similar website about, if not any year, certainly many different years.

I think this website is being rather disingenuous in the way it presents things. Not only in the way they cherry picked a bunch of charts which show drastic changes after 1971 (and which may or may not be related), but also in the way they leave it to the reader to "do their own research" while framing the question so as to ensure that 5 minutes of googling will yield the answer they want to plant in the reader's mind.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com