When I was in graduate school in 1980, the rage was “the zero-sum society” a concept championed by Lester Thurow. His thesis was that America’s decline wa inevtable as the rest of the underdeveloped world improved, as there were only so many esources to go around. It may have seemed that way when Jimmy Carter was president, LoL.
re: Thurow
Yes, I was undergrad around the same time and another favorite author for some of my lefty profs was “The Social Limits to Growth” by Fred Hirsch..... looking back now, it seems that according to that book much of the past 27 years consisted of performing “impossible” tasks of growth because we were already pressing up against the “limits” of all possible growth in the late ‘70s (the book was published around ‘78, IIRC).
We should be nearly out of all important resources by now and so blighted by declining quality of life that contemporary life is simply unbearable.
In case you missed it.