A sincere question to our Canadian brothers and sisters up north, but do you receive the same leftist claim that the reason the North American continent boomed in the 50’s was because our industrial base wasn’t destroyed during WWII? Because we were “lucky” and it wasn’t capitalist free market policies that resulted in our higher standards of living? You know, that the rest of the civilized world was hopelessly dependent upon us and our exports blah blah blah?
Because I get it all the time and I’m mighty sick and tired of it.
Oddly our main adversaries the West Germans and the Japanese rebuilt their industrial base very quickly after the war and became part of the global prosperity engine. The East Germans on the other hand had to build wall to keep their people in.
It’s a not just a “leftist” claim, it’s a middle and right one two.
And it was indeed a major factor in the post war unparalleled boom in North America. Also the liberalization of trade GATT, Taft Hartley etc. helped NA take better advantage of that vacuum.
What should upset you should not be that reality, but that that boom In wealth – a temporary one – made NA management fat and lazy as it did government and that that begat the creation of social programs and shop floor concessions that were far too generous. And once that vacuum was eliminated there was a blowback in NA as those concessions had made many sectors – almost all of them heavily unionized – hopelessly uncompetitive. Within a couple of generations they were almost all gone.
In closing, the decimation of the rest of the worlds productive capacity (save for the USSR which was able to create the facade that it was economically flourishing and thus conte the fraud that communism was a viable option of governance for a couple of decades longer than it otherwise would have) was indeed a huge factor in the gloriously bouyant economic times in NA from the late forties to the mid-sixties. Freer trade and some workplace deregulation helped NA take greater advantage. We in NA were in large degree very “lucky”.
And the graph of exports to GDP is bogus. You should also show the imports to GDP. It is an even steeper slope.
Just couple relevant or not …thoughts. Aulsraulia still imports a great deal of its industrial needs. The left like to claim alberta is rich “because” of oil yet Japan has none and Vezuala has plenty!!
The left is quick to draw conclusions without looking at all the facts…intentionally most of the time.
Also the Christian influence on work ethic and property rights impacted the positive advance in health and comfort/prosperity in NA. Much more than even fiscal conservatives will generaly acknowledge.
Of course it wouldn’t have anything to do with the Bretton Woods agreement would it? Bretton whaaa? Yeah, you know the agreement the victor allies made to make the green back the international standard reserve currency spawning a massive growth in the domestic economy due to the currency expansion this caused, spawning unprecedented productivity and spending in the consumer sectors.
But naaa, lets just believe on faith alone the mumblings of some crusty misanthropic old commie prof who can’t balance his own household budget and who thinks prosperity can be decreed into being by other crusty old commie oligarchs.
Because I get it all the time and I’m mighty sick and tired of it.
Capt’n.
If you are “getting that all the time” then you are hanging with a bunch of loozers..
Pretty farking simple!
There is another lie/myth on the same subject, declaimed by the socialists. “All the advances of womyn’s rights and entry into the industrial complex was do to WWI and WWII. The socialists and communists like to say that communism in the USSR was responsible for the advancement of womyn. In the US, it was not the market place, but the wars that liberated womyn (exactly the opposite. The PhD Old Country Daughter, against much librul opposition proved that in Russia, womyn were heavily into the medical land many industrial occupations, before the war and communism. She also proved that in the US, there was a steady, constant rise in female employment from before WWI to the 1990s. Here librul professors gave her hell and tried to keep her from being awarded her advanced degrees. As much as they tried, they couldn’t refute any of her data or conclusions. (although, this was good practice for their AGW efforts). They even brought up that her mathematical regressions could only be done on my Military-Industrial type computers. She refuted this by asking them if they had ever heard of Lotus, and offered to get them a copy. She was saved by one elderly, conservative, tenured professor.
Industrial capacity vs the rest of world certainly had a lot to do with it. US public spending was pretty high in tbe 50’s especially defence. Think building the interstates too. GI Bill. Lots of reason the US boomed until the oil shocks.
“…our industrial base wasn’t destroyed during WWII…”
Guess we could say that about a lot of countries – and quite a few of them managed to avoid the 50s boom.
America is special in a way not heard of before.
I guess i think of it as a moving target thingee,
The 1950 were the golden years of Classic Cars & Music. The Great generation had that “CAN DO” attitude of total confidence. (I started my career, late 50’s, working with those giants). The retooling of GM & Ford, RCA (Electronics developed during the War) Television.. Movie Studios. Every thing was moving at light speed.
1950’s were a bad time for communism in America:
I think you can say without any doubt that communism had nothing to do with the economic success of the 50’s. Unless you consider that the Communists were hiding under beds because Joe McCarthy was active with his Anti-Communist Crusade. 1954 hearing’s into State Department infiltration.
If we want the 1950’s again, go after the communists
My father and mother were in Washington DC 1951-53 for 18 months, my father with an RCAF coordinating mission with
the USAF. I visited them several times, sometimes driving down by car with my grandmother (she was a good driver;
at 8 years old I was a passenger). I thought that the US was great! Canada too was doing fine. Lots of
prosperity, the first waves of post-war immigration (Eastern European) were still arriving, and there was general prosperity.
There was also still tremendous relief that WWII was over! I think that many young men were thinking that they were very
lucky indeed still to be alive. Youthful exuberance was the overall mood, I would say.
There were dark clouds, of course. The Soviet treachery still hadn’t been completely digested; the McCarthy over-reaction was
in full swing. The prospect of another world war was very real. And, of course, the Korean war was underway – which involved
my father and two uncles just as they had been involved in WWII.
The Left was generally ridiculed if they spoke up, which they didn’t much, because of their close associating with the Soviet
penetrations of our security.
The difference between American prosperity and Canadian prosperity in the ’50s is kind of about the difference between getting involved in WWII when it was already half over in ’42 and being into the fight from the very beginning in ’39.
I should have added above that WWII was Total War and Canadians held the line while Americans sat back and played baseball.
War is a costly affair.