This is interesting. Clearly _something_ happened in the early 70s (noise in the signal makes it hard to be sure of the precise year - if even there is a single discrete event). I've seen the abrupt change in economic trends attributed to different causes by different people:

- The end of the Bretton Woods monetary system

- The occurrence of peak domestic oil production in the US

- (now) removing the ability of senators to vote privately

...

The Average American Has No Influence on Public Policy (Princeton study)

https://medium.com/k-street/the-average-american-has-no-infl...

> We removed senators right to vote for the right things in private in ~1970. After this things have gotten very bad in the US–policy wise. Polarization.

Political polarization has been bad for the US it's entire history. It was certainly worse and more violent in the two decades before 1970 than since, though the last few years have been ramping up.

Partisan polarization was low for much of the post-WWII period because the issues of political polarization were unusually misaligned with the axis between the major parties (because of the unresolved partisan realignments around the New Deal and then Civil Rights which didn't finish shaking out until the early 1990s; as the direction of that shakeout started to become clear by the 1970s, partisan polarization started rising, and really took off from the 1990s, but this partisan polarization isn't a special condition, it's a reversion to the historical norm.

Interesting but I don't think that privacy would help since those buying the legislation would know they're not getting what they're paying for and deal with that fact in some other way.

After it therefore because of it.

fiscal policy changed forever in 1971 when nixon took us off the gold standard

Not just that but the global elimination/reduction of capital controls.