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What happened?
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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*some white families
Redlining continued to force black and brown people into less desirable parts of town even past the 50s. Many schools and public spaces were still legally segregated, and many banks wouldn't lend mortgages and employers wouldn't hire black or brown people
Car ownership rates were much lower then, as were college attendance rates. But yes, there were lots more good paying "blue collar" jobs with good benefits per capita due to the work of unions.
Also it helps that Europe was completely fucking devastated by World War II and that the United States had more factories than everyone else combined and was outside of bomber range. We dominated the world economy afterwards for literal decades because of that. What we're seeing in the late 20th century/early 21st century isn't some fantastical economic decline solely attributable to policy decisions or the war on organized labor (although it's a contributor) - it's rebalancing.
I'm going to say policies and decisions by executives to move jobs overseas actually had a ton to do with it. I also disagree that it's a rebalancing because this is not a zero-sum game, meaning the US does not have to give up prosperity for another country to gain prosperity.
No, but the US had greater prosperity because of an unfortunate event that reduced the prosperity of other nations and which afforded a particular set of unique economic opportunities. It's very easy for your average schmuck to get a bigger piece of the pie when the pie is simply bigger for a little while.
Also, those jobs were always going to be exported as soon as it became economically viable to do so. That decision as never not going to be made. If you want to address the root cause of American economic inequality or job loss, you can point to capitalism's need for constant growth as the root cause. But don't ignore the historical realities of America's post-war boom economy in order to fantasize it as some mythical "lost economic golden age."
Off shoring jobs wasn't at all a foregone conclusion. One measure some countries take that we don't is to tax any company that uses too much foreign labor as a foreign company. Instead we drank that globalism kool-aid.
...are you talking to me? Where am I fantasizing this "as some mythical 'lost economic golden age?'" I'm here pointing out that the 50s actually sucked really hard for a lot of Americans who were not middle or upper class white people
I'll add though that America's "pie" is much, much larger today than it was in the 50s, so saying it was easy to have more of the pie back then because it was bigger is false
You're right that it isn't a 0-sum game, but people in power in the US have always treated it as one.
There was always going to be a slump as the rest of the world came back. But we have done many stupid things to accelerate it and hurt workers more than what would happen naturally.