> In the 50s every man could have been a "winner" in an environment of half of the world destroyed after ww2. In the United States, quite possibly so. But what

> In the 50s every man could have been a "winner" in an environment of half of the world destroyed after ww2. In the United States, quite possibly so. But what about people who already had their wealth literally bombed away? For example, most of Dresden was destroyed. My argument isn't that improved economies are zero-sum, but rather the example of the 1950s was one where many were set up to succeed and others to lose. And if you look further back, the opportunity to have cheap ubiquitous land to carve out suburban areas was enabled by taking land from Native Americans. The economic pie is ever-growing, but it seems moments of great technical advancement, war, etc segment the growth into new groupings of winners and losers, and for the average person, riding on the coattails of this growth is merely being at the right place at the right time, perhaps being at the right spot on the socioeconomic ladder.