Edit: I meant less than a century ago! My bad! Just a brain fart.
In: 9783
The real reason is that in the post-WWII era America was uniquely positioned to make a shit ton of money. All other major countries had wrecked infrastructure, decimated populations, and reparations/war payments/rebuilding costs. America had all of its infrastructure intact, a large population, and the ability to lend money/invest cheaply in the aforementioned decimated economies.
Also, this created perfect conditions for workers. Because America was the only place left that could manufacture a number of things, lots of easily accessible, high paying (due to huge demand from foreign countries) jobs opened up. This, along with a lack of globalization which would cause downward price pressures on american goods, as well as a much smaller degree of foreign investment into the US housing market causing high prices in desirable US markets that we see today, and finally lack of competition from the middle east in oil production which only began to be exploited in the post-wwii economy created a perfect storm for working people to make a lot of money. There are other factors (one I would suspect was a healthier, less divided population) but these are some main ones.
Latest Answers