Due to industrialization and urbanization, workers were able to organize in the nineteenth century and threaten the state with insurrection. This gained them higher wages, better working conditions, education for their children, and most significantly the franchise. Holding the majority of votes, workers could peacefully and democratically further their interests. They did so during the American Progressive Era, and as a result of the Great Depression’s delegitimation of laissez-faire ideology, unparalleled advances were made in the welfare of the general population between the 1930s and 1970s, the only period in history in which inequality declined due to explicit public policies. This, combined with the extraordinary abundance following World War II suggested that the primordial problem of scarcity had been solved, prompting a surge in nonmaterialist values, especially among the Baby Boomer generation, the first in history to come of age without fear of material privation. This optimistic post-scarcity generation turned its attention to postmaterialist values such as greater equality, more fulfilling work, racial justice, gender parity, and rejection of war and imperialism. It seemed that the dream of past visionaries, that once the problem of material scarcity was solved, we would turn to cultivate higher nonmaterial goals was coming true.