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Those decades of working capitalism in Germany were subsidized by cheap Gastarbeiter labor from Southern and Eastern Europe, and cheap Eastern Bloc manufactured
by vrganj 2mo ago
Those decades of working capitalism in Germany were subsidized by cheap Gastarbeiter labor from Southern and Eastern Europe, and cheap Eastern Bloc manufactured goods on unfavorable terms.
In the US, they were subsidized by overthrowing democracies across Latin America to keep the extraction flowing - key words being United Fruit Company, Guatemala, Chile, Operation Condor.
The prosperity in Frankfurt and Detroit was always paid for elsewhere. The economic miracle was a miracle of exploitative extraction, a miracle only for the already privileged.
- ahartmetz 2mo agoOh, please, stop this guilt cult nonsense. Economic progress (much of which is technological progress) is a positive-sum game for the most part, it doesn't require exploitation of this or that foreign ethnicity, and that was never a critical part of it after the East India Company or something. That exploitation has also been more important to make the rich richer than to make the poor richer, which is what "capitalism was working" is about. Countries have stopped relying on imports for national security reasons often enough in history and they did fine after a few years of adjustment. I mean, apart from the consequences of war.