the "good old days" were a time when capitalism itself was made to capitulate to the post-war reality of an America that very much distrusted the idea of the free market itself. Major companies like GE and Dow Chemical bankrolled themed rides and attractions at Disney not because they had the marketing budget, but because most Americans emerging from the great depression and the new deal had found themselves accustomed to the concessions they had made during their time in the bread lines.
Americans had to be bought, in a way. Excellent pay, generous time off, and pension retirement was all on the table as industry bent the knee to capital that threatened slipping back into a pseudo-agrarian role after the war and in doing so rob the barons themselves of the capital they sought to exploit. By the seventies things had turned around. capital was eager to return to its former position of exploit, anyone from the WW2 era had been sufficiently promoted to leadership and their kids placated with the same, and Reagan-era liberalization could return the globe to various states of servile production and slave-classery oncemore.
The death of globalization is stymied by major hangovers of the cyclical crashes of global capitalism itself. in the eighties stagnant wages meant everyone got a credit card, and in 2008 amidst the credit crash it meant everyone got free money in the form of low and no interest. the red flag of the death of globalism should have been when equifax and other houses of the guild of credit made the shift to stop factoring medical bankruptcy at all as part of the credit report. another factor hindering globalizations death is the collective disinterest in considering real unemployment in favour of fanciful mathematic aerobics designed to appeal to policymakers and the very market such a KPI could inform. US unemployment judged at the U6 rate is more than six percent and compounded by other factors such as medical debt, undischargeable student debt, and once again stagnant wages and this doesnt even begin to cover things like COVID rent freeze debt and the chronic effects of the methamphetamine and opoid addiction crisis in the US still ongoing today. 2023 also sees the expiration of covid rental protections in numerous major states, which will likely drive up homelessness and unemployment oncemore.
Finally theres the rampant inflation that not even a return to Clinton era interest rates seems capable of stopping. So if anything we'll probably "bail out" globalism before we advance past it.
The "good old days" were a time when every factory in the world other than America's had just been destroyed in a massive world wide war. That's not happening again. We are never returning to "blue collar american workers create most industrial products the world consumes" and so we are never returning to massive demand for unskilled American workers. Even if the US completely bans imports low skill workers still wouldn't have the advantage they did in the post war era because every other country will continue to import cheap goods from china instead of expensive american ones.
Sure, that's probably true. But can we get back to "blue collar American workers create must industrial products a nation of 350 million people consumes?" Maybe we will have fewer TVs and fewer cars, and raspberries will cost $5 a quart because we'll be paying American-born workers to make everything and harvest everything. But if that gives everyone something to do and flattens the social hierarchy, that would be better.
You're getting downvoted by people who don't understand the difference between relatively poorer (which they won't be) and materially poorer (which they will be without cheap junk from overseas).
You're really optimistic. I do see a low but non-zero chance that some tensions between china/india/russia/middleeast with each other or someone else escalate into a wiping out of lots of factories, one way or the other.
Funny you should say that. I've seen an opinion in the wild that the USA saw German industry as a threat and thus blowing the pipelines was hitting multiple birds with one stone. The consequent energy policy between USA and Germany further penalises German industry.
> That's not happening again. We are never returning to "blue collar american workers create most industrial products the world consumes" and so we are never returning to massive demand for unskilled American workers
This makes for a great low effort narrative but I'm unconvinced the luxurious economic circumstances of those decades weren't just a result of the competition literally going up in flames.
There was NO chance any industrialized nation was staying stagnant or moving backwards after WW2 created all sorts of potential for further industrial progress. That's just a non-starter in so many ways.
Americans had to be bought, in a way. Excellent pay, generous time off, and pension retirement was all on the table as industry bent the knee to capital that threatened slipping back into a pseudo-agrarian role after the war and in doing so rob the barons themselves of the capital they sought to exploit. By the seventies things had turned around. capital was eager to return to its former position of exploit, anyone from the WW2 era had been sufficiently promoted to leadership and their kids placated with the same, and Reagan-era liberalization could return the globe to various states of servile production and slave-classery oncemore.
The death of globalization is stymied by major hangovers of the cyclical crashes of global capitalism itself. in the eighties stagnant wages meant everyone got a credit card, and in 2008 amidst the credit crash it meant everyone got free money in the form of low and no interest. the red flag of the death of globalism should have been when equifax and other houses of the guild of credit made the shift to stop factoring medical bankruptcy at all as part of the credit report. another factor hindering globalizations death is the collective disinterest in considering real unemployment in favour of fanciful mathematic aerobics designed to appeal to policymakers and the very market such a KPI could inform. US unemployment judged at the U6 rate is more than six percent and compounded by other factors such as medical debt, undischargeable student debt, and once again stagnant wages and this doesnt even begin to cover things like COVID rent freeze debt and the chronic effects of the methamphetamine and opoid addiction crisis in the US still ongoing today. 2023 also sees the expiration of covid rental protections in numerous major states, which will likely drive up homelessness and unemployment oncemore.
Finally theres the rampant inflation that not even a return to Clinton era interest rates seems capable of stopping. So if anything we'll probably "bail out" globalism before we advance past it.