Excellent post.

You could say that was when things reverted back to "normal". The FDR social reconstruction and post WW2 economic boom were the exception, anomaly. But the Scandinavian countries seem to be doing alright. Sure, they have some big size problems (Sweden in particular) but daily life for the majority in those countries appears to be better than a lot of people in the Anglosphere.

A difference also is neoliberalism ramping up in that time period of the 80s. The concept of privatizing anything and everything and bullshit like “private public partnership” are fairly recent.