Essay: With inflation at its highest rate in 40 years, historian David Oshinsky looks at how previous generations of Americans handled their own inflation crises
Inflation is soaring, Wall Street is bearish, the supply chain is clogged. Empty store shelves dominate dinner table conversations. The new president is in hot water, his approval rating at just 30%. A recession seems likely. The year is…1946.
The unease that Americans currently feel about inflation, now at 9.1%, is new to them but would have been familiar to past generations. Inflation in the U.S. has reached the double-digit mark in eight of the 77 years since the end of World War II, forming three distinct clusters: 1946-48, 1974-75 and 1979-81. These clusters provide a window into the past, showing both the threads that connect our era to previous episodes of severe inflation and the factors that set it apart.