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50 Years ago. The US Economy was a peach. Aside from the report Time reported that 10% of all goods consumed in the UK were from the US. The US sold 40% of Europe's autos and 80% of their computing power. Sheer capital made scale possible for the US companies that the war torn regions just couldn't catch up to...of course some may say that was only until we started diverting said capital advantage to war efforts, others may say it's actually healthier and inevitable that the world started producing its own goods. I never realized how dominant the US really was. Trade surpluses are pretty nice.
At any rate, it amazes me, the script style, the simplicity, the cause and effect. It also treats money as a finite resource. GNP growth was x, this much will be spent on the military, this much left to the private sector.
50 Years ago. The US Economy was a peach. Aside from the report Time reported that 10% of all goods consumed in the UK were from the US. The US sold 40% of Europe's autos and 80% of their computing power. Sheer capital made scale possible for the US companies that the war torn regions just couldn't catch up to...of course some may say that was only until we started diverting said capital advantage to war efforts, others may say it's actually healthier and inevitable that the world started producing its own goods. I never realized how dominant the US really was. Trade surpluses are pretty nice.
At any rate, it amazes me, the script style, the simplicity, the cause and effect. It also treats money as a finite resource. GNP growth was x, this much will be spent on the military, this much left to the private sector.
I though it was neat. Maybe you guys will too.
This is no secret how far the U.S. was ahead of everyone else. But it wasn't going to stay at that level forever.
I bought a copy of Arthur Frommer's "Europe on $5 a Day" and started planning. Spent most of '68 touring Europe, on an average of $7 a day. 210 days on $1500, lodging/food/transport. In London, B&B in Edgeware Road was 15 shillings (75p). I think the RT ticket across the Atlantic was $135.
The European economy was still crippled in 1947. It was not by 1967. The boasts of American Exceptionalists are both many and decidedly overblown. The Economic Report of the President is meanwhile written every year by staff at OMB and CEA. These folks are not quite as bad as Mike Pence, but they are not in any sense a bunch of independent, non-partisan people.
From 1947 t\o 1967, the USA did do a great deal to aid western Europe's economy, enabled by the fact that the US didn't have any of its own war-damaged infrastructure to repair. But it was not done of any altruism, but to outbid the communist bloc to win, with cash, the hearts and minds of the Europeans, and keep their economies healthy enough to become captive markets for US exporters.
it was also the civil rights era...it wasn't all "peaches" in the US
It certainly wasn't. Rah-rah types tend to think of the 1950's as some sort of golden age, but we went through three difficult recessions during the decade and of course, the Soviets beat us into space with Sputnik, making us look and feel like a second rate power. And in addition to Jim Crow at home, we had the disgraceful witch hunts of Joe McCarthy and HUAC, and the notion of forcing women out of the workforce and back into the kitchen with no more ambitious a future than to somehow discover the secrets of becoming a Happy Homemaker. Times were so prudish that TV was encouraged only to show Elvis from the waist up so that his gyrating hips would not corrupt any flowers of American womanhood. It was a cold, dark, and gray time indeed.
I graduated high school in 66..blue collar jobs that you only needed a high school education and could support a family on were a dime a dozen..gone, gone, gone are those days..
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