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"Worked fine" is a pretty vague description for the year we had a Great Depression, world war, Jim Crow, Japanese internment to name a few.
by tootie 1mo ago
"Worked fine" is a pretty vague description for the year we had a Great Depression, world war, Jim Crow, Japanese internment to name a few.
- rayiner 1mo agoThe U.S. was at the apex of its power during those years. Those years are also why we remember earlier immigration waves as “working.” The foreign born population dropped from 15% to under 5% during that period. The Italian and Irish enclaves disappeared and so did the separate ethnic identity of those groups (to a large degree).
- Gud 1mo agoThe rest of the world was bombed to pieces while the USA had an untouched industrial output.
- rayiner 1mo agoThat’s a common misconception. The U.S. actually became the world’s largest industrial power before World War I. Germany had 60% of the US’s GDP per capita in 1910. It dipped during the war itself, but by 1960 it was closer to 70%. https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/us-gdp-per-capita https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/us-gdp-per-cap....
- sokoloff 1mo agoWhether or not what you say is correct, it does not at all contradict GP’s two claims.
- rayiner 1mo agoIt contradicts the conclusion he’s drawing from those two facts, which is that U.S. economic dominance results from European economies having been destroyed after WWII. The U.S. became a world power during its isolationist phase prior to WWI.
- sokoloff 1mo agoI think the last 20 years of that 45 year period were substantially due to exactly what they described. If you give any debit for the decade-long Great Depression, or wartime malaise due to loss of life, emotional toll, and rationing, it’s fair to conclude that half of the period of good times was during exactly that post-war rebuilding (largely powered by US industrial capacity) and concomitant baby boom.
- rayiner 1mo agoThere was not any particular discontinuity in GDP per capita growth during the post WWII period compared to previous periods: https://conversableeconomist.com/2023/09/14/the-remarkable-steadiness-of-us-economic-growth/ https://conversableeconomist.com/2023/09/14/the-remarkable-s....
- throwaway85825 1mo agoBombed to pieces by the USA, ironically enough.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1mo ago[flagged]
- throwaway85825 1mo agoI would have preferred the banks be told not to expect a bailout in 1914. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. It's been a problem for a long time and the body count stretches into the millions.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1mo agoHow the heck is that related?
- throwaway85825 1mo agoAll wars are bankers wars. In this case without the banks, and the government bailing out the banks the mosmost destructive wars of the 20th century never would have happened.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1mo agoHow do you explain the existence of wars between societies which didn't have banks? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- alchemism 1mo agoMmmmhmmm. Ah yes 1921, the year both the Klu Klux Klan (and European Fascism) metastasized in society. All immigration controls come from a rather interesting, dark place; shifting of the Overton Window, and all that.
- UncleMeat 1mo agoI believe that human flourishing is a better goal than state power relative to its rivals.
- hn_acc1 1mo agoWe also had strong unions and income tax rates as high as 95% on the highest income brackets.
- rayiner 1mo agoYeah we should also have very high income tax rates.
- p_j_w 1mo ago[flagged]
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1mo agoFalse equivalence. The claim was: "the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49453997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49453997 We should modularize our discussion to distinguish between the various effects of immigration and the most humane/optimal way to enforce immigration law.
- hollerith 1mo agoSo you put the blame for WWII on the US government, then?