Originally Posted by
Brian Holcombe
Not sure why we would have suffered in such a fashion, we weren’t one of the original belligerents in either war and both Hitler and Japan pulled us into WWII.
I'm fairly sure Andrew was not saying that we should have suffered the same devastation as Europe, he was commenting that our economic growth and world leadership after WWII was partly due to the fact that our economy was not in tatters. The soldiers came home, went to college on the GI Bill, and went on to lead the world in technology development. The United States had almost everything going for it after WWII, and we reaped the benefits of that good fortune.
There was a lot of government money spent before and during WWII on research (RADAR, aircraft design, nuclear, etc.). It was for technology to be used in the war, but a lot of it helped after the war. And the organizations of engineers and scientists that were set up to do these things were able to redirect their research and development to peacetime activities. Those things were not there, and not possible, in early post war Europe.
The US had a real head start after WWII and we took advantage of it to become the leader of the free world. We don't have that advantage any more.
Mike
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.