We’re entering an age of every-country-for-itself. Tariffs are coming in faster than we can process, as the main promoter of an integrated global order, the U.S., makes a 180-degree pivot. The trust cultivated over the last 90 years will not be easily restored, even if the U.S. returns to its previous ways.
But what’s driving this push by the new American administration to isolate their country? They say that they want to repatriate manufacturing jobs that were lost overseas, and to return to an age of prosperity last seen decades ago.
They refer to the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, a golden age of job prosperity for many people, not just in the U.S., but also in Canada, western Europe and beyond. The world had just finished tearing itself apart in World War II, and countries were all busy rebuilding themselves. There were affordable houses readily available, families were able to live comfortably on even a single income, and factory jobs offered benefits long since lost, such as generous pension plans.
Starting in the late 1960s, however, inflation set in, wages stagnated, factory jobs began to be lost to overseas competition, and poverty began to climb, particularly for blue collar workers. Houses became ever less affordable, costs of raising a family shot up, and resentment set in, as people longed for what they considered to be their entitlements.
Yet this prosperous period only lasted for about fifteen years, powered by the recovery from the huge shocks of a great depression followed by a massive global conflict that the period from the 1930s to the mid 1940s were marked by widespread misery, do we have any other periods of prosperity that we can point to when trying to return to the past?
Even before the great depression, poverty was widespread. Many people worked on small farms, and all that was necessary to set off hard times and hunger was a bad drought. Pensions were very rare, and the elderly depended on their children to survive.
With the MAGA movement fixated on getting back to a period that lasted for a little more than a decade, and which was over 60 years in the past, they should ask themselves whether there’s any chance of success. Creating prosperity is an extremely complicated challenge, but simply trying to recreate a brief period from several generations back isn’t the answer, especially when the factory jobs they’re trying to bring back will probably be lost to robots within another generation regardless.
Published in the Pontiac Journal on April 23, 2025.
