It seem like all of America, left and right, has fallen for the myth of working class prosperity during the post war boom. You’ve heard the mantra: a single earner could afford a house, car, and college for a family of four. This was never true for the majority of Americans. And for those few who did enjoy this lifestyle, it was achieved not by the owners sharing more of the wealth, but by excluding women and PoC from mainstream economic life.

Furthermore, most of this prosperity from housing, transportation, and education was made possible through government largess. Examples include the Interstate highway system and the GI bill. And all these government loans, grants, and scholarships were exclusive to real citizens: white men. Sometimes this was explicit in the law, sometimes it was enforced through sneaky regulations like ‘red lining’. Even when the law included minorities, there were still barriers for PoC and women to collect what they were entitled to. These barriers ranged from Kafkaesque bureaucracy to murderous terrorism.