Traditionally, one of the most reliable ways of predicting future economic performance is to look at corporate earnings. More earnings means more sales, means more profits, means more investment, means more hiring, means more economic growth. Rinse and repeat. Simple.

The Powell memorandum told the Republicans to go forth and use ownership of media and industry by the super-rich to change American popular culture from top to bottom — in order to put a stop to the social and political ferment of the Sixties and Seventies, crush the so-called counterculture, and try to make any revival of such developments impossible once and for all.