#Post-War Economics

[arctic-hands]

I bought jello packs, cottage cheese, whipped cream, and fruit cocktail on a whim, all for separate purposes, but I've suddenly been possessed by the ghost of a prozac-addled bored housewife from the Fifties with a grudge against her asshole cheating husband and have this incredible urge to mix it all together

[wonder-worker]

'"Alice was perceived to be a destructive influence on every aspect of Edward III’s kingship, but specifically on his abilities as a military leader resulting in the subsequent collapse of the war in France." [In the Bridlington Prophecies, Erghome] speaks of a woman through whose love and counsel the king was impeded from waging many fair wars at that time. She has made the king effeminate. He no longer has a taste for war but remains at home indulging in luxury.'

(Laura Tompkins)

nothing but respect for MY fourteenth-century antiwar activist <3

[t4tails]

speak for yourself i will eat a dentist

[stars-and-darkness]

.

[nando161mando]

Don't kill yourself, think of the economy!!!

[firefighter-diazbuckley]

yk it’s bad enough that we could say that the erie canal was influential in starting the civil war but i truly believe you could make the argument that it also led to the great migration

[racefortheironthrone]

Just read that the reason the US boomed post wwii wasn't because of fdr/domestic policy but because the US had little international competition since Europe was destroyed. China closed off etc, soviet union was communist and only the usa had the infrastructure and was in a league of its own and that even if this had continued under reagan and onwards we would still have the inequality and other economic problems we have today. Is this true?

This is a common misconception, confusing an entirely temporary dominance in production with national prosperity. It's wrong on both foreign and domestic levels.

I'll start with the foreign: it is true that the U.S had (relatively) little international competition to start with after WWII, but it was also true that the U.S had (relatively) little international customers either. Europe, formerly the richest region in the world, had been utterly devastated. The Soviet Union and China were out of the question due to Cold War concerns. In Central and South America, Africa, and Asia, trade was limited by lower incomes and the increasing popularity of import-substitution industrial policies.

This is why, after WWII, the United States pursued a policy of fostering international competition and giving these countries access to the U.S' massive domestic market in order to spur economic recovery in Europe and Japan and prevent those countries (and Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia) from going over to Communism. Hence the Marshall Plan, hence Bretton Woods, hence GATT, the World Bank, the IMF, and on and on. Here, I recommend Judith Stein's Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance.

On to the domestic: the main reason why the argument that the U.S economy was prosperous after WWII because of international dominance is stupid is that trade just wasn't that big a part of the U.S economy: U.S exports and imports together were less than 10% of U.S GDP throughout the 1940s (with a brief exception for the war), the 1950s, and the 1960s. The U.S had industrialized behind massive tariff walls in the 19th century, and even after the Underwood Tariff of 1913 that shifted Federal policy from tariffs to income taxes, the economic habits of generations remained.

When it comes to the major sources of post-war economic prosperity, you really do need to look at the New Deal, WWII economic policy - especially bond policy that saw 85 million Americans buy a combined $185 billion in war bonds that would be released into the post-war economy, and the GI Bill which generated $33 billion in home loans (unfortunately, almost entirely for white veterans only).

[sukimas]

i like to imagine the way that renko and merry dress is retro even for their retro age. what’s “in” is 50s-60s clothing.

[iamthepulta]

I've actually been scrounging for an ending to Ellenville, because it's hard to actually 'end' a tragedy with something that feels complete, and that last post hit me with yeah, that's right. Because we live in a world where blood is protection and the cost of safety; and it fits in so neatly with the themes of death as stasis and longevity.

The 'end' is the regulations in place. Not even watching it happen, but success. This is The Pushcart War but epic fantasy.

[lilithism1848]

[oflgtfol]

“Other shortcomings [in communicating science] are evident in television science fiction programming. Star Trek, for example, despite its charm and strong international and interspecies perspective, often ignores the most elementary scientific facts. The idea that Mr. Spock could be a cross between a human being and a life-form independently evolved on the planet Vulcan is genetically far less probable than a successful cross of a man and an artichoke… There must be dozens of alien species on various Star Trek TV series and movies. Almost all we spend any time with are minor variants of humans. This is driven by economic necessity, costing only an actor and a latex mask, but it flies in the face of the stochastic nature of the evolutionary process. If there are aliens, almost all of them I think will look devastatingly less human than Klingons and Romulans.”

- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

[wonder-worker]

"Among their complaints [in 1460, the Yorkists] specifically blamed the earls of Wiltshire and Shrewsbury and Viscount Beaumont for ‘stirring’ the king [Henry VI] to hold a parliament at Coventry that would attaint them and for keeping them from the king’s presence and likely mercy, asserting that this was done against [the king's] will. To this they added the charge that these evil counselors were also tyrannizing other true men* without the king’s knowledge. Such claims of malfeasance obliquely raised the question of Henry’s fitness as a king, for how could he be deemed competent if such things happened without his knowledge and against his wishes? They also tied in rumors circulating somewhat earlier in the southern counties and likely to have originated in Calais that Henry was really ‘good and gracious Lord to the [Yorkists] since, it was alleged, he had not known of or assented to their attainders. On 11 June the king was compelled to issue a proclamation stating that they were indeed traitors and that assertions to the contrary were to be ignored." - Helen Maurer, "Margaret of Anjou: "Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England"

Three things that we can surmise from this:

We know where the "Henry was an innocent helpless king being controlled and manipulated by his Evil™ advisors" rhetoric came from**.

The Yorkists were deliberately trying to downplay Henry VI's actual role and involvement in politics and the Wars of the Roses. They cast him as a "statue of a king", blamed all royal policies and decisions on others*** (claiming that Henry wasn't even aware of them), and framed themselves as righteous and misunderstood counselors who remained loyal to the crown. We should keep this in mind when we look at chronicles' comments of Henry's alleged passivity and the so-called "role reversal" between him and Queen Margaret.

Henry VI's actual agency and involvement is nevertheless proven by his own actions. We know what he thought of the Yorkists, and we know he took the effort to publicly counter their claims through a proclamation of his own. That speaks louder than the politically motivated narrative of his enemies, don't you think?

*There was some truth to these criticisms. For example, Wiltshire (ie: one of the men named in the pamphlet) was reportedly involved in a horrible situation in June which included hangings and imprisonments for tax resistance in Newbury. The best propagandists always contain a degree of truth, etc. **I've seen some theories on why Margaret of Anjou wasn't mentioned in these pamphlets alongside the others even though she was clearly being vilified during that time as well, and honestly, I think those speculations are mostly unnecessary. Margaret was absent because it was regarded as very unseemly to target queens in such an officially public manner. We see a similar situation a decade later: Elizabeth Woodville was vilified and her whole family - popularly and administratively known as "the queen's kin" - was disparaged in Warwick and Clarence's pamphlets. This would have inevitably associated her with their official complaints far more than Margaret had been, but she was also not directly mentioned. It was simply not considered appropriate. ***This narrative was begun by the Duke of York & Warwick and was - demonstrably - already widespread by the end of 1460. When Edward IV came to power, there seems to have been a slight shift in how he spoke of Henry (he referred to Henry as their "great enemy and adversary"; his envoys were clearly willing to acknowledge Henry's role in Lancastrian resistance to Yorkist rule; etc), but he nevertheless continued the former narrative for the most part. I think this was because 1) it was already well-established and widespread by his father, and 2) downplaying Henry's authority would have served to emphasize Edward's own kingship, which was probably advantageous for a usurper whose deposed rival was still alive and out of reach. In some sense, the Lancastrians did the same thing with their own propaganda across the 1460s, which was clearly not as effective in terms of garnering support and is too long to get into right now, but was still very relevant when it came to emphasizing their own right to the throne while disparaging the Yorkists' claim.

[justaholeinmysoul]

The main example of how the mass thinking nowadays is UScentric and unfiltered from context is the age discourse. The whole boomer thing.

[kyouka-supremacy]

/

[gremlins-hotel]

Yeah okay, so to anyone that might be freaking out about the Su-27/MQ 9 collision and if it might lead to a US-Russian conflict, honestly it’s really blasé compared to what it could be. If anything it’s funny.

The MQ 9 Reaper is an unmanned drone (UAV = unmanned aerial vehicle). Key word: unmanned. This would be a different story if this were an incident between two pilots. However, it’s not. It’s an incident between one pilot in a $30 million aircraft and a $32 million remote-controlled/autonomous-capable drone.

At most this footage displays the historic unprofessionalism and poor training of most Russian pilots. The pilot dumps fuel on the drone for whatever reason. That plume you see? Fuel dumping. And then the pilot attempts to physically hit the drone - which costs more than his own aircraft in conversion - in the propellor. The Reaper is basically a fly. The Russian pilot just attempted to spray it with Raid and then gave up on that and used themselves as the world’s most costly flyswatter. Make no mistake that the damage they could’ve inflicted on themselves is a real and dangerous possibility. If the pilot were smart (or perhaps better trained) they should’ve just used the Su-27’s GSh-30-1 30 mm autocannon platform. What a far more intelligent (and safer) idea.

See, in bird culture, this shit would be a dick move. Like what the fuck dude! I’m flying here! I don’t even have food! Pilot doesn’t even have the mind to use disrespect chaff or flares for style points. I know the Flanker has them. Big Сука Sukhoi playing stupid fuck fuck games at the wheel of whack-fuck. This is going in the United States’ cringe compilation.

[vamptastic]

i genuinely don't understand what capitalist countries stand to gain by fighting each other instead of collaborating economically. like why does the us warmonger against china when we would benefit more from trade? ostensibly it's for moral reasons, but regardless of the veracity of any given claim i think the united states has shown itself to prioritize economic success over human rights on a number of occasions especially during the cold war. i suppose i assume most wars are waged on the grounds of economic gain (natural resources, global political power, straight up money in the form of the military-industrial complex) but you could make an equally solid argument that just as many are waged over purely social and political issues- ethnic and religious conflict, blind nationalism, the whims of a dictator. it just confuses me at times, i guess. i have a hard time believing that the united states is bound and determined to wage war against china over human rights abuses, infringing on other countries sovereignty, and neo-colonialism in africa when we've propped up fascist dictators in many a country who've done far worse. is it literally just the association with communism? because surely whatever evil fuckers actually want war know that china is very far from communist right now. is it just nationalism? the idea that we must be on the top of the totem pole, even if our economy would stand to gain from trade? because i suppose i could believe that, but i think if that was true we wouldn't have gotten to where we are today in the first place. blegh. at the end of the day i am also ignoring the fact that many many different groups of people want war against china for reasons ranging from sinophobic jingoist nationalism to a genuine belief that the united states is a global moral watchdog determined to establish ~democracy~ worldwide. but there is a definite slant to media coverage on china right now, genuine attempts at disinformation, and given that the media in the us is so deeply tied to corporate interests it leads me to believe that there has to be some economic motive here, and it frustrates me that i can't figure out what it is.