alt Hacker NewsPeople planning the post-WWII system wildly overestimated how how disciplined Americans could be.
The whole point of the US transitioning to a service economy was that it would upskill the workforce into the world's Delta Force team of highly educated scientists, engineers, researchers, etc. The rest of the world would handle the boring stuff like actually manufacturing the beautiful inventions designed by the US.
The problem is that a lot of the US populace is gung-ho patriotic and willing to die for their country, but absolutely refuses to learn math or generally do their homework for their country, which is what's actually required for this whole scheme to work.
I'm paraphrasing the shockingly astute observations of this guy[1].
>People planning the post-WWII system wildly overestimated how how disciplined Americans could be.
We had the post-WWII optimism and then the post-Cold War optimism clouding the judgment of an entire country.
I kind of wish we'd been more curmudgeonly like the Europeans.