The conventional wisdom is that the middle great American middle class was spawned in the aftermath of WW II with the utter destruction of Europe and Japan. Europe was in shambles and Japan was an occupied country. China was still an agricultural backwoods, so to speak. In short, America had no real competition and became the manufacturing base of the world. What happened to derail it all? A number of things, including the usual culprits. The military/industrial complex and the foreign policy establishment couldn't help themselves. They needed war after war, and that's what we got. First it was the Korean war. Then, by the 60s, we had the "Domino Theory" and the insertion of US forces into the Vietnamese civil war. More money spent on a foreign war the country could not really afford. LBJ pursued both the welfare state and the war in Vietnam, and the world was flooded with dollars. France decided they'd rather have their gold and eventually, Nixon closed the gold window in 1971 to preserve what was left of America's gold. And so Bretton Woods II followed Bretton Woods I. The Petrodollar became the world reserve currency and, for a number of years, that worked, more or less. Schemes were concocted and tales were woven. Nixon opened the door to China, and the rest is history. America didn't need all those pesky factories and high priced workers. Let the peons overseas do all the work. Keep costs low. Keep the public happy. Little by little, the American manufacturing base was gutted. Shipped overseas, never to return. The rise of the multinational corporation. Countries were a thing of the past. America became nothing more than the totality of its multinational corporations and the insatiable need for quarter after quarter of profits. Keep the shareholders happy. What followed was more war, more foreign adventurism, and more and more government borrowing at rates that remained low because of all the cheap overseas labor. But shipping all those jobs overseas came with a cost: the rise of the multipolar world and the decline of the American empire. No Empire lasts forever, and the American Empire will be no exception. Dropping bombs on people will not reverse the course of history. Someone should so advise President Trump.
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