rebuilt the economy to suit them, so you get asymptotic markets decoupled from actual value produced, flat wages, economic vapor lock, and other problems far, far deeper than any boom-and-bust cycle: remember, the Reagan administration admitted in 1981 that trickle-down was just to give the economy back to the wealthy after Hoover and FDR stole it from them, and not to improve the economy
the Fordist model was unsustainable, cripplingly dependent on gas remaining under 50 cents, and so ideological it was quite dangerous (remember, they would gladly commit a hundred million Silkwoods if it was for Progress And The Greater Good)--but the new fincancier-and-rentier model is far, far worse than anything conceived before
you can even see the split in suburbs: pre-1980 'burbs may be a cookie-cutter, sprawling Ponzi scheme full of paranoid, pesticide-spraying Wallace voters cycling from strip ball to bowling alley--but there's room to play, the houses were actually DESIGNED by someone and invited you outside of the walls), and frankly the neighborhoods can look beautiful as the sun sets and the stars come out; the postwar houses are still around and doing moderately well, in fact, and they'll be the burbs left standing at $500/barrel
80s, 90s, and 00s are all close-packed, steroidal, isolated, flat-walled, hunchbacked, two- or three-storied McMansion messes with a useless strip of garden you can't grow a tree in; they lack both character and the ability to acquire it; there's no place to play or unwind outdoors, and the kids are driven from school to soccer to Chipotle without ever seeing a schoolbus or even a curb: they're "machines for living," and not good ones since they're already starting to sag and crack on the inside; but again these houses are built as investments, not living-spaces, and they're mere investments to the developers as well--and once these overleveraged, unwalkable near-row-houses implode (the new burbs are still 25-33% foreclosed, and full of unemployment and drugs) the developer can just sit on the land as everyone moves closer to work/shops/freeways--thus profiting at both ends; even the mortgages were declared inflation-proof and gambled upon
everything problematic about suburbia has been bloated and hypertrophied past recognition because the markets are given full rein without regard to the sheer materiality of land and house: they're intended to be bought with borrowed money and then resold, transitory places on your way elsewhere; suburbia in fact has ceased to offer privacy, light, air, or yards
it's frankly part of the US's uglification: the bottom-liners took over and even airline seats and service shrank; just as back in the 90s we thought that the Spice Girls were the worst thing the music machine could do to us, so in the 40s we thought Levittown was the lowest we could sink; something may've gone out of the country with Reagan's inauguration--but there's no reason we can't fight!
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/571-the-great-indoors-or-childhoods-end
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trick-or-treating#Trunk-or-Treat
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