America in the 1980′s
The 1980s became the Me! Me! Me! generation of status seekers. During the 1980s, hostile takeovers, leveraged buyouts, and mega-mergers spawned a new breed of billionaire. Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, and Ivan Boesky iconed the meteoric rise and fall of the rich and famous. If you’ve got it, flaunt it and You can have it all! were watchwords. Forbes’ list of 400 richest people became more important than its 500 largest companies. Binge buying and credit became a way of life and ‘Shop Til you Drop’ was the watchword. Labels were everything, even (or especially) for our children. Tom Wolfe dubbed the baby-boomers as the ‘splurge generation.’ Video games, aerobics, minivans, camcorders, and talk shows became part of our lives. The decade began with double-digit inflation, Reagan declared a war on drugs, Kermit didn’t find it easy to be green, hospital costs rose, we lost many, many of our finest talents to AIDS which before the decade ended spread to black and Hispanic women, and unemployment rose. On the bright side, the US Constitution had its 200th birthday, Gone with the Wind turned 50, ET phoned home, and in 1989 Americans gave $115,000,000,000 to charity. And, Internationally, at the very end of the decade the Berlin Wall was removed – making great changes for the decade to come! At the turn of the decade, many were happy to leave the spendthrift 80s for the 90s, although some thought the eighties TOTALLY AWESOME.
FACTS about this decade.
Population: 226,546,000
Unemployed in 1980:
National Debt: 1980 – $914,000,000,000
National Debt: 1986 – $2,000,000,000,000
Average salary: $15,757
Life Expectancy: Male 69.9 Female 77.6
Minimum Wage: $3.10
BMW was $12,000; Mercedes 280 E was $14,800
Attendance: Movies 20 million/week
