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Your premise needs a reality check. > 1. Millions of women entered the workforce (started when all the men were overseas fighting) The rate of women in the wo

Your premise needs a reality check. > 1. Millions of women entered the workforce (started when all the men were overseas fighting) The rate of women in the workplace ticked up slightly during WW1 and WW2, but by no means was it a sea change. That's a narrative pushed by "traditionalist" thinkers that found a simple thing to pin social upheaval on The real change was accelerated industrialization during the first half of the 20th century. Millions moved from farms to factories, men and women alike. > 2. The government went off the gold standard So what? > Going off the gold standard kicked off massive inflation. If you call a steady 1-2%/year "massive". The real effect has been to stabilize the economy. I guess people who like gold standards don't know their economic history. The 19th century, which is arguably a recognizable modern economy (in the West), was punctuated by panics and strong recessions that made the "Great Depression" look tame. (which itself makes the Great Recession look pretty tame.). Getting of the gold standard was key to fixing that. > 3. Millions of people in other countries replaced the workforce via globalization I agree with you here, but again I think you overstate the impact. The US was once in the position of SE Asia today: (relatively) educated workforce, cheap labor, lax standards compared to Europe. In it's time, the American South was the jobs-export market for the North. These trends have been happening basically forever. More importantly, the remaining manufacturing jobs, and there are many, are high wage and high skill. They're also high productivity, so there are fewer. That leads to another force at work, which is a bigger threat than exported jobs: automation. Most manufacturing jobs didn't leave, they disappeared.

fmajid 5y ago
The US was never a low-wage economy. Sure, there was crippling poverty in places, like the Dust Bowl, but labor has always been the bottleneck in a nation richly endowed with natural resources, which is why American logging practices are much more wasteful than European ones, they are designed to maximize the productivity of the workforce. When the International Watch Company was set up, it was by an American looking for cheap labor in Switzerland.
azth 5y ago
> The real effect has been to stabilize the economy. The economy only needed stabilization because it was running on usury. If you ban usury, as Islam does, then you wouldn't need fake money that can be printed at will, and these crazy periodic cycles won't happen. It's not like today is stable anyway, I've spoken to several people in finance and they admitted to me these things.
- ericmay 5y ago
  Just to be clear you’re suggesting high/predatory interest rates are the reason that the economy needs stabilization? If so, my frame of reference for predatory is like 15%, 27%, etc. numbers like that. Is that what you’re saying? If so can you expand on your thoughts here and link these two elements together better? I generally associate high interest rates with high risk. I’d loan my friend $500 for 0% interest. But some person I’ve never met who is sketchy? That would be a 25% rate with collateral. Ya know? Are you tying this into the Federal Reserve somehow? Is it interest rates for mortgages that you view as predatory? Small business loans?
  - azth 5y ago
    I'm suggesting that any non zero rates are predatory. Loans should be reserved as acts of charity, as Islam dictates. Otherwise, it will open up to running the economy on debt, which is exactly what we see today. Debt fuels more debt, more inflation, it's a rolling snowball. It's no wonder we're in the mess we see today. Of course dissociating the currency from gold or other precious metals allows them to print more money to pay off their ever growing debts. This is how all these factors are connected. Not to mention immoral acts like gambling (aka put and call options) and selling what you don't own (shorting), all of which are prohibited in Islam, are contributing causes as well.
    - ctvo 5y ago
      Trying to roll back the clock to the golden age of Islam is not something you’d expect to find in HN’s comments section. Liquidity fits into your world view how? In its most simple form: A business or person needs money to buy resources to make things to earn money. Do they go to the Sultan and beg for a loan based on charity?
dnautics 5y ago
> If you call a steady 1-2%/year "massive". It compounds. Over the course of 50 years this is ~100% inflation.
cma 5y ago
> The rate of women in the workplace ticked up slightly during WW1 and WW2, but by no means was it a sea change. WW2 is just where it started, it went from 28% around then to 47% as a percent of labor force, a huge change. The male labor force doubled in absolute number since then, but the female one increased almost 4X.
- 8note 5y ago
  How much of that is child care switching from not counted to being counted? Women were working before that, just in an uncounted way
  - cma 5y ago
    If it went from 1 provider on 2-3 child care to 1 on 20 daycare, the effect is similar to if it had been counted anyway. One significant source of uncounted labor was removed with the washing machine. Enormous amounts of time were spent manually washing clothes. But automating this likewise had a similar effect to making child care more efficient and increased downward wage pressure elsewhere by allowing more to enter other parts of the workforce.
padobson 5y ago
If you call a steady 1-2%/year "massive". The real effect has been to stabilize the economy. I guess people who like gold standards don't know their economic history. The 19th century, which is arguably a recognizable modern economy (in the West), was punctuated by panics and strong recessions that made the "Great Depression" look tame. (which itself makes the Great Recession look pretty tame.). Getting of the gold standard was key to fixing that. I have literally never seen this argument before, and I've been reading economics books for 10 years. I'm more curious than anything. Please tell me where I can find more.

fmajid 5y ago

The US was never a low-wage economy. Sure, there was crippling poverty in places, like the Dust Bowl, but labor has always been the bottleneck in a nation richly endowed with natural resources, which is why American logging practices are much more wasteful than European ones, they are designed to maximize the productivity of the workforce. When the International Watch Company was set up, it was by an American looking for cheap labor in Switzerland.

azth 5y ago

> The real effect has been to stabilize the economy. The economy only needed stabilization because it was running on usury. If you ban usury, as Islam does, then you wouldn't need fake money that can be printed at will, and these crazy periodic cycles won't happen. It's not like today is stable anyway, I've spoken to several people in finance and they admitted to me these things.

ericmay 5y ago
Just to be clear you’re suggesting high/predatory interest rates are the reason that the economy needs stabilization? If so, my frame of reference for predatory is like 15%, 27%, etc. numbers like that. Is that what you’re saying? If so can you expand on your thoughts here and link these two elements together better? I generally associate high interest rates with high risk. I’d loan my friend $500 for 0% interest. But some person I’ve never met who is sketchy? That would be a 25% rate with collateral. Ya know? Are you tying this into the Federal Reserve somehow? Is it interest rates for mortgages that you view as predatory? Small business loans?
- azth 5y ago
  I'm suggesting that any non zero rates are predatory. Loans should be reserved as acts of charity, as Islam dictates. Otherwise, it will open up to running the economy on debt, which is exactly what we see today. Debt fuels more debt, more inflation, it's a rolling snowball. It's no wonder we're in the mess we see today. Of course dissociating the currency from gold or other precious metals allows them to print more money to pay off their ever growing debts. This is how all these factors are connected. Not to mention immoral acts like gambling (aka put and call options) and selling what you don't own (shorting), all of which are prohibited in Islam, are contributing causes as well.
  - ctvo 5y ago
    Trying to roll back the clock to the golden age of Islam is not something you’d expect to find in HN’s comments section. Liquidity fits into your world view how? In its most simple form: A business or person needs money to buy resources to make things to earn money. Do they go to the Sultan and beg for a loan based on charity?

dnautics 5y ago

> If you call a steady 1-2%/year "massive". It compounds. Over the course of 50 years this is ~100% inflation.

cma 5y ago

> The rate of women in the workplace ticked up slightly during WW1 and WW2, but by no means was it a sea change. WW2 is just where it started, it went from 28% around then to 47% as a percent of labor force, a huge change. The male labor force doubled in absolute number since then, but the female one increased almost 4X.

8note 5y ago
How much of that is child care switching from not counted to being counted? Women were working before that, just in an uncounted way
- cma 5y ago
  If it went from 1 provider on 2-3 child care to 1 on 20 daycare, the effect is similar to if it had been counted anyway. One significant source of uncounted labor was removed with the washing machine. Enormous amounts of time were spent manually washing clothes. But automating this likewise had a similar effect to making child care more efficient and increased downward wage pressure elsewhere by allowing more to enter other parts of the workforce.

padobson 5y ago

If you call a steady 1-2%/year "massive". The real effect has been to stabilize the economy. I guess people who like gold standards don't know their economic history. The 19th century, which is arguably a recognizable modern economy (in the West), was punctuated by panics and strong recessions that made the "Great Depression" look tame. (which itself makes the Great Recession look pretty tame.). Getting of the gold standard was key to fixing that. I have literally never seen this argument before, and I've been reading economics books for 10 years. I'm more curious than anything. Please tell me where I can find more.