Writers have often described certain decades in a nation’s history as a “golden age” such as the “Golden Age of Ancient Athens” and, later of “Ancient Rome” (see here and here).

What about America? Has the U.S. had a “golden age?”

Some writers have claimed that the post-World War II decades of the 1950s through the early 1970s were a “golden age” (see here and here). These were the years when Americans found jobs in an expanding economy, started families, bought small homes in blossoming suburbs and sent their sons and daughters to spanking-new schools.

The federal government spent money on World War II veterans’ education, making home mortgages affordable, and building the nation’s interstate highway system. This massive spending sparked and sustained an economic boom through the 1950s and 1960s. It was a time when a man who had an eighth grade education and a steady job…