(In the days when, you know, war helped the economy).
Though the Eisenhower administration, the World War II war tax, to pay for war was still in effect. Also, we had bombed the hell out of our biggest manufacturing competitors, Germany and Japan, so US manufacturing was riding high. So was big oil. And building the US highway system conceived of by FDR put a lot of people to work (as well as literally and figuratively paving the way for a very different way of life in America, building in the suburbs and exurbs, etc., including veteran's housing). So heavy construction, residential constructions and all the industries and sectors that profit from new home construction were booming, too.
These factors and others combined to give us the "guns and butter" economy for which the Golfer in Chief, Eisenhower, gets so much credit. But, given the potential it had, it didn't last all that long.
We had a 'go-go" stock market in the 1960s that reminded some of the market before the 1929 crash. And then we had stagflation in the 1970s. Since the 1970s, real wages have risen very little.
Created an opening for the capitalist class? LMAO.
The capitalist class has been in charge since the days of the East India Company, John Hancock, slave traders, carpetbaggers and weapons and war profiteers like Samuel Prescott Bush (born 1863).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_StatesFounder's finances, at 1787, were good to excellent, though, as a group, those loyal to the King were wealthier. (Duh)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Bush
Why do we act as though the 1% just grabbed hold? (or the 15% or whatever percent they have been at various times since 1607). Why are we perennially brand new? The percentage of the top keeps getting smaller, but the plutocracy is as old as Jamestown.
As for Krugman, he is a good Democratic spokesperson/partisan neoliberal economist.
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