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> When America was truly at the top of the world in the 1950s and 1960s, it was under 10%. A high fraction of college attendance is better correlated with the 2

> When America was truly at the top of the world in the 1950s and 1960s, it was under 10%. A high fraction of college attendance is better correlated with the 21st century decline in America's situation. I think this is a textbook example of correlation not implying causality. The US was awarded a unique competitive advantage with WW2, which allowed it to become the world's hegemon. Much of the reason that the US was able to preserve it's status was how it managed to leverage that competitive advantage to fuel it's economical and technological development to build up and retain a competitive advantage. This was only made possible by its investment in higher education and R&D, which is a big factor behind the progress in the 1950s and 1960s you're lauding. Things like the GI bill are renowned by the huge impact it had on the tech industry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Kleiner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Kleiner The US never managed to shake off its anti-intellectual bias, and has this irrational belief that ladder-pulling is somehow conflated with the cream always rising to the top, but if anything it's preventing their domestic talent from fulfilling their potential.

rayiner 11mo ago
The U.S. was already the richest country in the world per capita by 1880–even at the peak of the British Empire. Most of its military achievements during the war—building up the world’s largest Navy and airforce from almost nothing within a couple of years—was a product of the industrial economy that already existed before the war. America’s preference for common wisdom over book learning is a strength, not a weakness. Formal education filters for risk averse, process and credential-oriented people. And you need some of those people, but you don’t want your society to be like India where you worship credentials and degrees like religion. The GI bill isn’t a counterpoint. GI’s still had to gain admissions at a time when colleges were far more selective than today: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2024/01/23/why_college_students_average_iq_has_fallen_17_points_since_1939_1006608.html https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2024/01/23/why_college... (undergraduate IQs fell from 119 in 1939 to just 102 in 2022). So you created a filter that was extremely rigorous. It supported college education for people who were both significantly smarter than average, and also had served in the military—the Marcus Aurelius type.
- timmytokyo 11mo ago
  I see very little evidence for this abundance of American "common wisdom". If anything, America has always had a deeply anti-intellectual vein running through it, whether it was the Scopes monkey trial, the Know Nothing Party or what you see in the present political scene. Higher education, especially the affordable kind at public universities, has been a bulwark against the paranoid delusions that often dominate societies that revere superstition and "common sense" over reason, empiricism and humanism.
  - lambdaphagy 11mo ago
    The Know Nothing Party had nothing to do with anti-intellectualism per se. It was a secret anti-immigration party whose members were required to say they “knew nothing” of the group if asked.
  - _DeadFred_ 11mo ago
    Huh? Little evidence? Prosperity in America was built by millionaires that drove 20 year old white pickup trucks (because base color was $100 cheaper). They were very "common wisdom". Almost all had to understand and operate within the commodities markets(where reason and empiricism meet head first with humanism and human behavior), head multi million dollar organizations, negotiate multi million dollar deals, and tried to build multi-generational (not next quarter) businesses. And every one I knew made sure their children went to University and were educated, because they understood it's value. So did every farmer, factory worker, bus driver. Their kids didn't understand the value, they just new they had to go. Just like todays kids don't understand the value. I don't think that's changed, other than parents aren't forcing life choices on their kids. You are either very young and only exposed to the modern Audi driving millionaires, or had zero interaction with the actual industrial/ag/creative space/inventor America pre 2008/pre MAGA brainworms. But these people used to exist and were building blocks of this country AND local communities (unlike their zero community loyalty replacement leased Audi millionaires).
    - gishh 11mo ago
      Don’t climb that ladder and eat that food! We will beat you!
Xelbair 11mo ago
>The US was awarded a unique competitive advantage with WW2, which allowed it to become the world's hegemon. That advantage was: being the only country that wasn't ravaged by war, and that profited for a while by trading with every faction. Some of countries were also severly kneecapped by US betrayal of promises, made by allies - to restore pre-war borders, and handover of them to USSR - that means less competition. That also lead to US dollar becoming world's reserve currency, which may have affected the measured drop afterwards. There are so many factors involved in that that attributing it to just investment in higher education and GI bill is a gross oversimplification, so is previous post's attribution of the drop afterwards.
- locknitpicker 11mo ago
  > There are so many factors involved in that that attributing it to just investment in higher education and GI bill is a gross oversimplification, so is previous post's attribution of the drop afterwards. Your comment sounds like you didn't quite understood the point I made. The whole point was that US benefited greatly from WW2 to reach the position of world's hegemon. But that happened nearly a century ago, and reaching the position vs maintaining the position are two entirely different sets of challenges. My point was that WW2 gave the US a running start, but it still required work to preserve that advantage. The US's postwar investment in higher education and R&D was the key competitive advantage that allowed the US to preserve it's dominance until the present day. To put it another way, WW2 helped attract the world's finest research talent, but the technological and scientific achievements that followed were the result of the investment in domestic talent that followed. You cannot have the likes of silicon valley without the US's postwar investment in higher education and R&D.
  - Xelbair 11mo ago
    now how much of it was good investment, and how much of it was just plain advantage due to that? It is hard to separate those two to verify either - that is my point.
  - lenkite 11mo ago
    > maintaining the position are two entirely different sets of challenges. I will give full credit to the golden generation of Americans and the generation before that. They built America on true merit and efforts. However, maintaining the position was easy for the boomer and subsequent generations - break the Bretton-Woods agreement and shatter the gold standard after the USD obtained the throne of the world's reserve currency. This enabled the US to print infinite amounts of money and pile up unlimited debt and use the cash to sponsor any investment, any amount of social-security, buy anything and have the largest defense budget - so they can stomp anyone they want, heavily sponsor "regime change" - and still have relatively low inflation. The rest of the world just needs to grin and bear it. As a non-American, I am really hoping for de-dollarization and fully independent payment networks completely separated from the West. The Russia-Ukraine war and Trump sanctions has gotten us around 10% of the way there. Only then shall one see the real effect of that $33 trillion debt.

rayiner 11mo ago

The U.S. was already the richest country in the world per capita by 1880–even at the peak of the British Empire. Most of its military achievements during the war—building up the world’s largest Navy and airforce from almost nothing within a couple of years—was a product of the industrial economy that already existed before the war. America’s preference for common wisdom over book learning is a strength, not a weakness. Formal education filters for risk averse, process and credential-oriented people. And you need some of those people, but you don’t want your society to be like India where you worship credentials and degrees like religion. The GI bill isn’t a counterpoint. GI’s still had to gain admissions at a time when colleges were far more selective than today: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2024/01/23/why_college_students_average_iq_has_fallen_17_points_since_1939_1006608.html https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2024/01/23/why_college... (undergraduate IQs fell from 119 in 1939 to just 102 in 2022). So you created a filter that was extremely rigorous. It supported college education for people who were both significantly smarter than average, and also had served in the military—the Marcus Aurelius type.

timmytokyo 11mo ago
I see very little evidence for this abundance of American "common wisdom". If anything, America has always had a deeply anti-intellectual vein running through it, whether it was the Scopes monkey trial, the Know Nothing Party or what you see in the present political scene. Higher education, especially the affordable kind at public universities, has been a bulwark against the paranoid delusions that often dominate societies that revere superstition and "common sense" over reason, empiricism and humanism.
- lambdaphagy 11mo ago
  The Know Nothing Party had nothing to do with anti-intellectualism per se. It was a secret anti-immigration party whose members were required to say they “knew nothing” of the group if asked.
- _DeadFred_ 11mo ago
  Huh? Little evidence? Prosperity in America was built by millionaires that drove 20 year old white pickup trucks (because base color was $100 cheaper). They were very "common wisdom". Almost all had to understand and operate within the commodities markets(where reason and empiricism meet head first with humanism and human behavior), head multi million dollar organizations, negotiate multi million dollar deals, and tried to build multi-generational (not next quarter) businesses. And every one I knew made sure their children went to University and were educated, because they understood it's value. So did every farmer, factory worker, bus driver. Their kids didn't understand the value, they just new they had to go. Just like todays kids don't understand the value. I don't think that's changed, other than parents aren't forcing life choices on their kids. You are either very young and only exposed to the modern Audi driving millionaires, or had zero interaction with the actual industrial/ag/creative space/inventor America pre 2008/pre MAGA brainworms. But these people used to exist and were building blocks of this country AND local communities (unlike their zero community loyalty replacement leased Audi millionaires).
  - gishh 11mo ago
    Don’t climb that ladder and eat that food! We will beat you!

Xelbair 11mo ago

>The US was awarded a unique competitive advantage with WW2, which allowed it to become the world's hegemon. That advantage was: being the only country that wasn't ravaged by war, and that profited for a while by trading with every faction. Some of countries were also severly kneecapped by US betrayal of promises, made by allies - to restore pre-war borders, and handover of them to USSR - that means less competition. That also lead to US dollar becoming world's reserve currency, which may have affected the measured drop afterwards. There are so many factors involved in that that attributing it to just investment in higher education and GI bill is a gross oversimplification, so is previous post's attribution of the drop afterwards.

locknitpicker 11mo ago
> There are so many factors involved in that that attributing it to just investment in higher education and GI bill is a gross oversimplification, so is previous post's attribution of the drop afterwards. Your comment sounds like you didn't quite understood the point I made. The whole point was that US benefited greatly from WW2 to reach the position of world's hegemon. But that happened nearly a century ago, and reaching the position vs maintaining the position are two entirely different sets of challenges. My point was that WW2 gave the US a running start, but it still required work to preserve that advantage. The US's postwar investment in higher education and R&D was the key competitive advantage that allowed the US to preserve it's dominance until the present day. To put it another way, WW2 helped attract the world's finest research talent, but the technological and scientific achievements that followed were the result of the investment in domestic talent that followed. You cannot have the likes of silicon valley without the US's postwar investment in higher education and R&D.
- Xelbair 11mo ago
  now how much of it was good investment, and how much of it was just plain advantage due to that? It is hard to separate those two to verify either - that is my point.
- lenkite 11mo ago
  > maintaining the position are two entirely different sets of challenges. I will give full credit to the golden generation of Americans and the generation before that. They built America on true merit and efforts. However, maintaining the position was easy for the boomer and subsequent generations - break the Bretton-Woods agreement and shatter the gold standard after the USD obtained the throne of the world's reserve currency. This enabled the US to print infinite amounts of money and pile up unlimited debt and use the cash to sponsor any investment, any amount of social-security, buy anything and have the largest defense budget - so they can stomp anyone they want, heavily sponsor "regime change" - and still have relatively low inflation. The rest of the world just needs to grin and bear it. As a non-American, I am really hoping for de-dollarization and fully independent payment networks completely separated from the West. The Russia-Ukraine war and Trump sanctions has gotten us around 10% of the way there. Only then shall one see the real effect of that $33 trillion debt.