What made 50s America so great? Why was the purchasing power and the living standards so high there compared to the rest of the world?
This is what Joseph Goebbels predicted would happen in the US:
But senior Goebbels was wrong. The US didn't reduce the wages of its workers so that they could compete against the Soviets, they raised the wages and managed to successfully resist Bolshevik agitation in their country, but how did they do that? How did they raise the wages so much?
Other urls found in this thread:
en.wikipedia.org
twitter.com
You're romanticizing things you shouldn't.
Because the rest of the industrialized world was destroyed by ww2, so the US had a monopoly on manufactured goods for decades after, until those countries rebuilt.
Plus, there were capital controls/regulations that prevented investing in foreign countries.
The monopoly-rent is what paid for the additional wages and prosperity of the US. When those other countries such as Germany and Japan rebuilt, they were able to compete again. Also, the whole free trade/deregulation thing allowed corporations to move their production to poor countries (outsourcing) and save money on wages, while retaining immigration restrictions, which is why labor has such a weak position in bargaining compared to capital as compared to the 50s
What made it so there were no black people in that photograph?
Keynesianism
Segregation I'm guessing. Still unofficially exists in some parts of the south.
Disneyland is in California. There was no segregation in California.
The 1950s were dog shit, and it eventually led to the counter culture of the 60's, read Charles Manson.
Black people couldn't afford to go to Disney Land back then.
Why do you think white people like to go to Disneyland?
What's monopoly-rent?
The monopoly America had in the interim between World War II ending and the rest of the world rebuilding and working harder than Americans ever did. We had an illusion of wealth and hard work, but actually our output was so little that it essentially kept the rest of the world poor, which is why it took so long to rebuild. Everybody else works harder than Americans.
Were tons of black, asian, and hispanic people last time I was at Disney World. I don't know why people pay to go through that hell of lines and overpriced food.
Oh yes there was famalam:
en.wikipedia.org
Half myth, half truth.
Inequality and social mobility never really decreased that much, but for a brief time, the pressure from unions combined with the de-facto American monopoly on exporting to Europe and Japan to rebuild them after World War 2. Also, legacy tariffs and other trade barriers dating back in tradition to the times of John Adams weren't yet dismantled like they were under Carter and every president since.
This, basically.
California could hardly have been considered a "Southern" or "Jim Crow" state.
It's not that bad. For me, it's nice to take a step out of reality for a day and ride some fun rides. You just have to go at the end of Summer, like August or September, and the park will be empty.
It had the appearance of greatness because various forms of racism/sexism/etc locked out significant portions of the working population from capturing a larger share of the post-war wealth.
The whole world being in ruins after world war 2 and colonialism
Thank god the US imported millions more to share the wealth after the awfully-racist '50s/'60s, right?
A middle class, and racial hegemony. Not even trolling, but I know I'm gonna get retarded replies.
not even white
Wonder who's gonna get profit…
I never said it was, but segregation, especially of the economic kind, was found throughout the entire continental US.
WWII's (and WWI's to a lesser extent) destruction of the competition certainly helped the US, but let's not forget the rest of the 1st-world was also doing much better 1950-1970. Likewise, because of their economies and regulations being closer to those of the US, competition from them doesn't suffer from the same unfair arbitrage as "competition" between the 1st-world & 3rd-world.
This. Keynesianism, labor unions, trade tariffs, migrant quotas.
Essentially, we work longer hours for lower wages.
Super Profits. Imperialism basically.
The Bretton Woods "agreement" was designed to enrich America at the expense of everyone else. That's what was known as the Exorbitant muh privilege.
Despite being supposedly linked to gold, the US could print $100 any time they wanted while the rest of the world had to sell $100 worth of products to the US to earn that money.
Unions
...
Bretton Woods + 4-5-6s
50% of all industrial capacity in US
after WW2
Social foundation of:
40 hours a week
50 weeks of the year
60 age of retirement
...
John Birch Society
socdem is a crypto-fascist, no wonder.
Reminder that without the civilizing force of Islam in Andalusia Germanized Europeans would have remained barely literate savages without honor our chivalry.
wew lad
yeah, basically. Real wages haven't increased since about the 70s. An increase in the minimum wage is compensatory for inflation, whereas before this the actual real wage average was increasing.
I think what made the 50s "great" as per the OP is a lack of competition among workers. Following the 50s, increases in technology, productivity, immigration, and feminism resulted in an increase in competition for jobs, creating a race to the bottom in regard to wages.
Trade, especially with the 3rd-world, made up a smaller part of our GDP than at any time before or after.
Like I said before, though the results of the world wars certainly tipped the balance in favor of the US, similar breakthroughs for the working class occurred in the rest of what would become the 1st-world during the 1950-1970 protectionist socdem consensus.
Look at the longer-range graphs in my post further up, and notice that such "competition" also existed prior to the 1930s, peaking in the Victorian Gilded Age of colonial empire. We've been faced with laissez faire transnational capitalism before, we killed it before, and we can do it again the same way again. Also, remember to use medians for figures like wages, not averages.
50's america was shit for anyone who wasnt rich. Just like now.
Because communists were agitating in those countries during that time, as communism was an attractive and not thoroughly discredited ideology.
As a result porky couldn't not give in to demands, as the alternative was porky getting the bullet.
Also in the 50s much of the workforce had saved porky's status by fighting in WW2, the most violent and lethal war in history. It wouldn't have played well at all for porky to fall back in the old routine by treating national heroes and their saviours less than decently.
The rest of the world had been wrecked by two world wars, and the US was still benefitting from increased production due to ending slavery later than the rest of the West.
ML was the biggest PR disaster for communism in its entire history, don't kid yourself, the constant specter of any given radical left movement around the world at any time potentially being hijacked by Stalinist state capitalism was a significant impediment both to internal unity and external promotion. Downfall of the 2nd Internationale was where everything went wrong.
The real driving engine of socdem reform was strong labor unions, policy reforms locking in working class victories to tip the scales further, and the defeat of fascism completely discrediting the most radical force of opposition against leftists for generations.
Which all evaporated as soon as the USSR started to wane.
The USSR didn't really run aground until the late 1980s.
The bulk of the offshoring, immigration, and privatization that destroyed unions happened in the 1970s (also when China switched to "mixed economy" and shifted from 2nd to 3rd world), the 1980s was just a mopup consolidation operation against a few pockets of stragglers.
But by that time the vast majority of "ML" countries were dominated by revisionists who barely pretended to care about communism and did a lot of business with the West and its trans-nat corporations.
Also the communist parties in the West were far stronger and more radical then they were before Khrushchev's "secret speech" according to Furr it causes half of communists to leave their parties. It was a serious setback and even the 60s radical wave was driven more by the politics decolonization then proletarian anti-capitalist politics.