What is the ONE thing that propelled the United States to the top?

[Big_Chief_Stove]

What is the one thing that caused the United States to be the world leader in the 21st century?

Is it because of the Petrodollar?

Is it WW2 manufacturing?

Luck?

The nuclear bomb

 

[Deleted member 491001]

Is it really a secret that Germans are the most productive and innovative people? All while losing endless millions of their best?

Nope. In fact I work for a German-owned company.

Was more intrigued by the 50% numbers.

 

[HunterSdVa29]

the entire WWII period

virtually none of the fighting was on our land.....
thus we stayed out of much of it, benefitting from Lend/Lease and Cash/Carry
We then maintained that manufacturing capability after the war (as did Germany and Japan, b/c well we let them)
To this day our military is the world's strongest, and it's not remotely close
We also largely didn't have colonies to grant independence after the war, like virtually all major other powers did (Spanish American War holdings perhaps count here, but PR is still a US Territory), giving us more clout in the forming of the UN

We also, previously after the Great War, established the League of Nations but then didn't join it. IT was worthless w/o us, just like every intl agreement has been since

 

[panamaican]

Well the whole country was built by immigrants and foreign slaves. The Bristish Empire and their legacy

I don't know, the British Empire and it's legacy are nice but Australia and Canada aren't on our level and they share our British origins.

 

[ShinkanPo]

I don't know, the British Empire and it's legacy are nice but Australia and Canada aren't on our level and they share our British origins.

But Australia and Cannada have immigrants too I guess ths US is just more diversed?

 

[Joe_Armstrong]

Progressive policy: which includes

Women's rights
Unions
Workers rights
Labor laws

It grew the greatest middle class the world has ever know.

Are you describing Western Europe, Australia, Canada or USA ?

 

[panamaican]

if you count all the way from 3 generations from an immigrant, thats most of the country, so no shit that most of the achievements were achieved by most of the country

Not exactly.

People have been coming to this continent since the 1500's, there are plenty of people who can trace their lineage back more than 3 generations. Both the Bush's and the Clinton's can trace themselves back to before the formal founding of the nation, the Obama's and the Trump's can't.

Equally importantly, it's not enough that our immigrant population has been productive but it's important to compare it to why we've been able to leap frog other nations, like the UK.

And the difference is that we've had a more robust immigration policy that allows us to siphon off great minds from competing nations. The sum of those people's innovations plus the innovations of their similarly talented offspring has propelled us to the top.

 

[panamaican]

But Australia and Cannada have immigrants too I guess ths US is just more diversed?

They didn't have immigrants in the same numbers that we did in the past.

 

[Shoemaker]

Maybe. But let's look at the burgeoning marijuana industry in the US. The Dutch had that shit relatively legal for years and what did they do with it? The had a crude vaporizer to smoke your buds, some hash, and maybe a few muffins, cakes, or shakes. Not much really advanced when compared to the innovations of the last five years or so here. Now we've got little cartridges with vape pens and every kind of edible it's possible to infuse with THC. Then there's all sorts of medicinal cremes and the like. Various methods of hash making. Strains are advancing. I think Americans are still highly innovative.

I know people who are working on automating crop maintenance, too. There's a lot of companies working on that kind of stuff, and it will eventually change the agriculture industry as a whole (I'm not thinking mass farming, but making it easier for families to grow their own food with little overhead or life interruption). And that's one industry.

America is also at the front of automative innovation, too. Tesla hasn't only created a revolutionary car, but changed the process for making it as well.

Amazon is a US company that has completely changed how people shop for everything. We could go on and on. "The US doesn't innovate anymore" doesn't hold a lot of weight when it's taken to task.

Discoveries like electricity, atomic energy and the internet are far and few in between. But they open a door for a huge amount of innovation and that's still happening. If people are complaining because there hasn't been a breakthrough as big as the internet in years, that's an unrealistic expectation (and I suppose the argument could be made that those kinds of breakthroughs are being made in genetics).

 

[Losfer Words]

Tons of shit went down during the WWII era (pre and post WWII). It was not luck, or religion or fate. It was planning and execution.

 

[ndwolfwood]

It's sort of crazy to me that so many Americans have come into contact with people they are suspicious of being reptilian but we all have to still maintain that it's not the reality we live in.

 

[Phr3121]

Snagging all the best scientists after ww2.

Not all, the Soviet Union got a good portion of them also. But yes, I would definitely say Word War II (1945) launched the United States into a first world power to this day. We had been in a depression before the war and I'm not sure how the country would have recovered had it not been for the war. I really don't think the Atom bomb played as much a part as people make it out to be. In 1945 the U.S. Air Force (Army) had the best bomber in the world, the B-29, and conventional Japanese bombing did more damage and killing than the A-bomb. B-17 bombings in Germany killed more people in Dresden than what was killed in Hiroshima.

Than you have the influence of the Dollar in the world economy, English as the universal language, technology, and advances in medicine. Kind of like the Union at the end of the Civil War. They had huge resources in reserve when the Confederacy had none.

 

[GSP_37]

Smart, hardworking people who took risks and actually cared about making the world a better place. (opposite of dumb, greedy, corrupt egomaniacs)

 

[Madmick]

A fresh start-- a reset, really-- of the power structure of the status quo coupled with a superabundance of natural resources (along with the import of slavery).

 

[Dan O]

Two of them. The Atlantic and pacific oceans

 

[tramendous]

What is the one thing that caused the United States to be the world leader in the 21st century?

Is it because of the Petrodollar?

Is it WW2 manufacturing?

Luck?

There wasnt one thing that propelled the us to the top and there wont be one that causes it decline.

 

[Sir Galahad]

What is the one thing that caused the United States to be the world leader in the 21st century?

Is it because of the Petrodollar?

Is it WW2 manufacturing?

Luck?

 

[InfoWars]

Higher IQs & bigger balls

 

[ShinkanPo]

Traffic discipline people do stop at stop signs!

 

[the ambush]

top of what? half the country resembles a third world shithole

No it doesn't brickhead.