Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

Faced with the costs of the Cold War arms race and the domestic demand for more social spending, government debts mounted. In October of 1975, the city of New York nearly defaulted, saved only by the teachers union, which reached into its pension fund.1 This situation led to what geographer David Harvey calls the “solution of the ’70s”: the re-empowerment of owners relative to workers after the uprisings at home and abroad via “unemployment and deindustrialization, immigration, offshoring, and all manner of technological and organizational changes (e.g. subcontracting).”