Society was different, laws were different, both Wall Street and Washington did eat a much smaller share of the US GDP.
You can't even extent your observation to the rest of the world, because almost the entire world passed through the same transformation at about the same time.
Not really. 1950-1960 was thoroughly the modern world: http://peakwatch.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452403c69e2017d40f40b.... Federal sending was 16-18% of GDP from 1952-1967. From 1995 to 2008 it was 18-22%. So a little smaller, but not "much" smaller. It spiked above that in 2008 because of the recession, but you can hardly blame federal spending that happened after the recession for having caused it.
Society was different, laws were different, both Wall Street and Washington did eat a much smaller share of the US GDP.
You can't even extent your observation to the rest of the world, because almost the entire world passed through the same transformation at about the same time.