alt Hacker NewsA lot of online culture laments the modern American life and blames the Boomers for all of our "woes".
The 1950s - 2000s post war boom was a tailwind very few countries get to experience. It's funny how we look back at it as the norm, because that's not what the rest of the world experienced.
There's a reason everything in America was super sized for so long.
Things have averaged out a bit now, but if you look at the trendline, we're still doing remarkably well. The fact that our relatively small population supports the GDP it does is wild.
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1850-1950 is much closer to a norm over human history -
3+ catastrophic major wars
3+ other minor ones.
2+ great depressions (each of which was as large as ever financial panic 1951-current combined)
3+ financial panic events
At least one pandemic - plus local epidemics were pretty common.
When I tell people "its never been better than it is today" they dont believe me, but its the honest to god truth.
> The 1950s - 2000s post war boom was a tailwind very few countries get to experience.
All countries who had participated in WWII experienced it, winners and losers.
What you said is the compete opposite of the truth.
>A lot of online culture laments the modern American life and blames the Boomers for all of our "woes".
>The 1950s - 2000s post war boom was a tailwind very few countries get to experience. It's funny how we look back at it as the norm, because that's not what the rest of the world experienced.
Especially ironic when perpetrated by youth from countries outside of America - like mine. I'm not a boomer, but my parents generation had it rough and my life was much easier in comparison. Importing "boomer" memes is a bit stupid in this context. Hell, even the name makes no sense here, because our "baby boom" happened later, in 1980-1990s.
> The fact that our relatively small population supports the GDP it does is wild.
Yes and no. It is very impressive what humans can do and the US is a remarkable country for managing to achieve what they have. On the other hand, if we're talking GDP it is basically just a trendline [0] of whether you let people better their own lives or not.
The main reason for US success on the GDP front is that the median administrator chooses to make people fail and the US does the best job of resisting that tendency. To me the mystery is less why the US succeeds but more why polities are so committed to failing. It isn't even like there is a political ideology that genuinely wants to make it hard to do business [1]. It mostly happens by accident, foolishness and ignorance.
[0] https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/the-cost-of-regulation - see the figure, note the logarithmic axis
[1] I suppose the environmentalists, maybe.