The U.S. was a developing country for *maybe* only 100-150 years. After that, the U.S. became arguably the largest economic, military, academic, manufacturing powerhouse the world has ever seen.
Yet, countries that have been around since ancient times are still struggling to even feed or house their population.
How is that possible?
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1. Geographical Advantages – Lots of land, lots of resources, relatively secure.
2. Colonial start – Starting as a European colony was undoubtedly an advantage for the US. Being a colony of the superpower of the time meant colonial US accessed the technology, skills, and education it needed to develop quickly.
3. European migration – Like the other developed ex-colony countries, the US has had waves of migration from developed (at the time) countries. Meaning a near constant supply of skilled, educated workers who could relatively easily set of the economic and administrative base for a developed country.
4. Slavery – The economic advantage slavery gave the US at a crucial point in it’s growth cannot be understated.
5. Europe destroying itself – In the early part of the 20th century, Europe was tearing itself apart. The UK, France, Germany were absolutely ravaged by the two world wars. Economically and militarily, they were significantly weakened and this also hastened the demise of the British Empire, meaning there was space for a new superpower.
6. Politics / Economics – The US has always pursued a much more capitalistic, free market economic policy than other developed countries. It has it’s downsides but it’s undoubtedly helped propel it’s economy into an incredibly strong position relative to other countries.
7. Size – Most of the points above could apply well to Canada or Australia. The main reason the US is a superpower and Canada is not is population. The US is by a huge distance, the most populous developed country. This gives it huge economies of scale and means that in absolute terms it can outspend the next richest developed country many times over. Norway is richer, per person, than the US but it has a population similar to South Carolina.
8. Misc – that’s not to say it was inevitable that the US would always have become an economic and military superpower. It’s a country that has more or less been governed extremely well compared to most other countries for the last few centuries. In particular, the threat that it would split up into multiple smaller countries that would eventually become rivals and essentially become a “North American Europe” and go through similar problems regarding wars, etc, was a real one. But the civil war was dealt with relatively quickly and decisively and the US managed to expand whilst still retaining a large degree of political and cultural unity.
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