Total economy of production doubled, wages rose by 70%, Americans 2x more productive than Germans and 4x Japan (true even before war started). Underlined just how qualitatively next-level the US economy was with true mass production tech. Old world was still half artisanal.
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William Whyte Organization Man is a perfect natural sequel to this, both in terms of narrative continuity and ideological harmony. This is your basic business conservative/social liberal posture that eventually turned into neoliberalism in the 80s.
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Aside: for Econ 101 in 1993, I had a Keynesian prof who used Samuelson text but the other section was taught by a Friedmanite prof. Pure chance that I landed in one section rather than the other (we couldn’t choose). Took me a decade after to discover supply side Econ in my 20s.
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Ah, now for Kaiser’s story. He called the postwar boom correctly, and expanded ambitiously. Bought Willow Run and Willys the Jeep company. All failures. Lost his entrepreneurial cred. Still recovered financially with global success in construction. Plus aluminum go brr.
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Kaiser dies in 1967 at 85. Outlived Knudsen by 19y. Much of his industrial legacy in heavy industry got outsourced or unionized away. That’s why today we know the name primarily as an employee healthcare firm. His legacy was decent non-union employee treatment I guess.
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Okay done. This book was fun and honest on economic and engineering side, but a bit lightweight and hagiographic/demonizing on the human side. Despite my strong sympathies I’d give it only a qualified “good enough for topic, not great; needs ideological caveats” recommendation.
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Thanks
@jamesgiammona for the recommendation. Scratched my itch to apply WW2 industrial mobilization story lessons to Covid reboot and climate action.Show this thread -
My takeaway in that front is... not optimistic. The US lacks the kind of economic guts that allowed this story to happen. Outside of parts of Silicon Valkey tech economy this spirit is basically missing. And SV does not dominate the YS as strongly as Detroit etc did in 1940s.
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Also an equally worrisome trio of red, blue, and green new-deal crowds is at work today, pushing the exact same sorts of bad thinking as in the 1930s, requiring the same kind of protection/interference to allow a recovery.
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Green New Deal: bad climate thinking inside huge big tent sjw bullshit and MMT package Red New Deal: Profiteering gangsterism under maga pretending 1950s rewind is possible. Blue New Deal: keep protecting financialization and unproductive predatory Wall Street denture elites
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A Freedom’s New Forge pretty much *has* to come out of Silicon Valley since there are no other candidate golden geese. But trends there are not promising either except for isolated pockets.
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