The industry Americans retained could have been under the same monopoly conditions of the 19th century. American working class labor could have been little more than serfs under these same historic conditions.
Instead, we got modern consumerism - private homes, cars, clothes, vacations, fancy liquors, home appliances, toys…
That isn’t what the working class of Latin America or Sub-Sahara Africa got, despite also being removed from the war.
Argentina was the 9th largest economy during the height of WW2. But Peronism looted the country rather than investing in it. South African apartheid and Brazil’s military coup set their economies back decades. These countries weren’t bombed by Germany or Japan, but they never took off like postwar USA.
Strong domestic unions held back the capitalist rot in the States at least until the Volcker shocks under Nixon, Ford, and Carter.
The industry Americans retained could have been under the same monopoly conditions of the 19th century. American working class labor could have been little more than serfs under these same historic conditions.
Instead, we got modern consumerism - private homes, cars, clothes, vacations, fancy liquors, home appliances, toys…
That isn’t what the working class of Latin America or Sub-Sahara Africa got, despite also being removed from the war.
Argentina was the 9th largest economy during the height of WW2. But Peronism looted the country rather than investing in it. South African apartheid and Brazil’s military coup set their economies back decades. These countries weren’t bombed by Germany or Japan, but they never took off like postwar USA.
Strong domestic unions held back the capitalist rot in the States at least until the Volcker shocks under Nixon, Ford, and Carter.