4 ms·

I've an alternative hypothesis regarding the US and business/startup creation: it is the most resource-rich country on the planet that is also almost entirely u

• adventured 12y ago
  That's incorrect. The US became the economic power that it is today, after the Civil War, due to industrialization and vast business creation. Between 1870 and 1900 it became the world's largest economy (and for those decades was consistently the world's fastest growing economy, by far). By WW1, the US had arguably a more powerful economic position than it does today (and it already had as great a share of global GDP as it does today). http://www.quora.com/Economic-History/At-what-point-did-the-US-become-the-biggest-economy-in-the-world http://www.quora.com/Economic-History/At-what-point-did-the-... It's also worth noting, what largely made the US the world's largest economy between 1870 and 1900, was value added manufacturing and not merely possessing vast natural resources (obviously possessing those resources made it far easier to manufacture; but many other resource rich nations did not accomplish the same outcome). As that Quora link references, the US was producing more steel than the combined output of Germany, France and Britain. The US was one of the primary leaders of the technology + science revolution that we refer to as the industrial revolution. By the time WW1 rolled around, the US was already the dominant manufacturing power.