[jitix]

Thanks for pointing out this skewed view of economic history common in North America.

The short period of boom in 50s/60s US and Canada was driven by WW2 devastation everywhere else. We can see the economic crisis' in the US first in the 70s/80s with Europe and Japan rebounding, then again in 90s/00s with China and East Asia growing, and now again with the rest of the world growing (esp Latin America, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Philippines, etc). Unless US physically invades and devastates China, India or Brazil the competition will keep getting exponentially higher. It's a shame that US didn't invest all that prosperity into social capital that could have helped create high value jobs.

In short, its easier to have high standards of living in your secure isolated island when the rest of the world (including historical industrial powers) are completely decimated by war.

[f1shy]

> It's a shame that US didn't invest all that prosperity into social capital that could have helped create high value jobs.

Are you aware of the plan Marshall?

[philipallstar]

Or of Silicon Valley, or Hollywood.

[xnx]

> In short, its easier to have high standards of living in your secure isolated island when the rest of the world (including historical industrial powers) are completely decimated by war.

Don't give them any ideas.

[jimbokun]

> It's a shame that US didn't invest all that prosperity into social capital that could have helped create high value jobs.

What does this sentence mean?

[redhed]

I assume the idea is more money could've been invested into bringing the bottom rungs of American society up and created a more skilled and educated workforce in the process.

[jitix]

Cheaper education, free/subsidized healthcare, free/subsidized childcare, cultural norms around family support, etc.

Things that let workers focus on innovation. IT workers in cheaper countries have it much easier while we have to juggle rising cost of living and cyclical layoffs here. And ever since companies started hiring workers directly and paying 30-50% (compared to 10-15% during the GCC era) the quality is almost at par with US.

[pfannkuchen]

Were there a lot of imports at that time in terms of materials or labor or food? If not, I don’t really see how money flowing in from abroad actually changes the economy in this area. If the wood is harvested in America and the workers are in America and the wood and workers are available, then any amount of money value generated by everyone else will be sufficient to pay them, unless there is a significant stream of imports that need to be paid for (which I’m not aware of in this time period).

What could have made a big difference is if foreign competition arose for American materials and land, which it did. But that is under our control, we collectively can choose whether to allow them to buy it or not, and whether to let people in at a rate that outpaces materials discovery and harvesting capabilities.

We also restricted materials harvesting quite a bit during this time period, for example I believe a lot of forestry protections were not in place yet.

[eli_gottlieb]

So you're saying that working-class living standards are a zero-sum competition across capitalist countries, even negative-sum as competing national economies grow their total output and hourly productivity?

That sounds like a really shitty system.

[leptons]

>The short period of boom in 50s/60s US and Canada was driven by WW2 devastation everywhere else.

The US just renamed "Department of Defense" to "Department of War" and they seem willing to go to any extreme to "Make America Great Again". Threatening to take over Canada, Greenland, and Panama already in the first few months of the current administration. Using US military on US soil. There's no line they won't cross. WW3 isn't off the table at all, unfortunately.

[palmotea]

> Thanks for pointing out this skewed view of economic history common in North America....

> In short, its easier to have high standards of living in your secure isolated island when the rest of the world (including historical industrial powers) are completely decimated by war.

So, what's your point? That the plebs shouldn't expect that much comfort?

[jitix]

A common maxim across all cultures is to "manage expectations" for happiness.

And while comparing societal standards expand the time horizon to 100 years, not nitpick one specific unnatural era of history.

An automotive engineer in Detroit in 1960 was a globally competitive worker because most of his counterparts in other countries were either dead, disabled or their companies bankrupt.

The equivalent in today's world would be aerospace engineers, AI researchers, quantum engineers, robotics engineers, etc who arguably have the same standard of living as the automotive engineer in 1960s Detroit.

Economic and technological standards evolve - societies should invest in human capital to evolve with them or risk stagnation.

[philipallstar]

Everywhere else being destroyed doesn't raise your standards of living. The main difference is the difference between post-war East Germany and West Germany. One got socialism and the other capitalism.