That’s another thing - the post-WWII push of women into the home, out of factories, female labor participation back down below even prewar levels. That was an intentional attempt to pacify the returning soldiers, both by giving them the satisfying experience of someone to rule over (formal mechanisms of white supremacy also ramped up) and by freeing up jobs to keep “the boys” busy. Same with the GI bill and the expansion of college.

It wasn’t obvious that the Great Drpression wouldn’t return after the wartime economy ramped down (indeed, that’s part of why it was never fully ramped down) and the prospect of returning to that state after huge segments of the populace had been trained for and hardened by combat, had been explicitly propagandized to look kindly on the USSR, and the Second Red Scare had yet to purge major pockets of communist sentiment from the media, state apparatus, labor movement, and 1880s-on “white ethnic” immigrant communities SCARED THE EVERLOVING SHIT out of the powers that be.

War veterans with a dissatisfaction with things and time on their hands are dangerous , dude. That’s why Rome settled them in conquered territories, so they wouldn’t come back across the Rubicon. The Bonus Army had marched on Washington and had to be beaten back with force in living memory.