105
US fixation on the hard-hat economy and making manufacturing great again makes little sense
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
105 points (97.3% liked)
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Oh, ffs! You'd think that a British journalist focused on economics and politics would get this right, but apparently not.
The Republicans look back at America's manufacturing boom of the 1950's with nostalgia, and they completely ignore the reasons for the boom - namely, the devastation from WWII. South America, Africa and the Southern Pacific countries didn't have big manufacturing economies. A significant number of other countries (Russia, Japan, most of Europe, etc) were physically devastated by the war and needed to rebuild from scratch.
With China focused inward and India focused on independence (and both countries recovering from the war), there simply wasn't another large, heavily populated country to compete - New Zealand, Australia, Canada, etc, simply didn't have the population to build and staff factories to the extent that the States could. That's where the US post-war manufacturing boom came from: the war itself.
And the boom died out because other countries recovered from the war and built their own manufacturing bases. That boom was never going to last, and it's unlikely to ever be repeated, and I just wish that people would realize that and move on from that dream.
That quote is not related to your comment, tho.
The quote is saying that manufacturing is work less developed countries do. And you explain why the US developed so fast.
My point is that the big manufacturing boom in the US in the 1950s was a direct result of the devastation from WWII, and the US being the one less affected country that wasn't facing inner turmoil (China, India) and that had a lot of resources and a lot of population. And that the decline of American manufacturing has less to do with the US transitioning to a service oriented economy, and more to do with the rest of the world rebuilding their economies and industrial bases after the war. When you're the only large-scale industrial manufacturer in the world, of course you do well. When you have to compete with a bunch of other countries, you actually need to compete.
Ah, I see what you mean. I don't think you're right. I think it's about where you can build the cheapest sweatshops. But I see what you mean.