If you were around for it, you know what a terrible time the late 1970s were:

LATE 1970’s:

  • Provocative Russian (then Soviet Union) Cold War aggression.
  • Very high gasoline and overall energy prices.
  • Runaway inflation.
  • Geopolitics roiled financial and commodity markets.
  • High food costs.
  • Supply chain issues.
  • Sour mood in America.
  • America leading from behind (President Jimmy Carter).

THE PRESENT:

  • Provocative Russian aggression; attacking Ukraine with a full-scale invasion.
  • Very high gasoline and overall energy prices.
  • Runaway inflation.
  • Geopolitics roiled financial and commodity markets.
  • Food costs.
  • Supply chain issues.
  • Sour mood in America.
  • America leading from behind (President Joe Biden).

It’s next to impossible to deny the similarities. It appears to be a near-identical “past is prologue” moment in American history.

In the late 1970s, there was an actual odd and even schedule for when you could purchase gasoline.

If your license plate ended in an odd or even number determined what day you could fill up at the gas pump. It required some advanced planning and thought; because you were limited to making a purchase every other day.

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That’s hard to comprehend in today’s more intolerant and entitled society.

If you missed your day to fill-up, you were simply out of luck for two days.

It was also a commonplace event in the late 1970s to sweat it out at the grocery store while your items, one by one would be tallied to see if you had enough money to pay for everything or, would you have to put some items back.

The late 1970s were so bad that a calculus that had never existed before was implemented. It was called “The Misery Index.”

It was a combination of the unemployment rate, added to the inflation rate. It was a nasty index, that drove Americans into a dark mood.

Again, it’s hard to imagine that any term like this would ever be used today. The American people would reject it out of hand.

The late 1970s led to the rise of Ronald Reagan and what became known as “The Reagan Revolution.”

It featured the most prosperous peacetime expansion in American history.

Significant economic downturns are almost always followed by robust growth. In all of American history, there’s only been one exception to this.

The severe economic-financial collapse of 2008 was followed by smaller, incremental growth.

It’s beginning to look a lot like the 1970s in an eerily similar way.

SOURCE: The Life & Times of Harry Hurley.

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