At it most basic, America is an agricultural nation, it has been since forever, and that suited the British back in the day, which is why the banned most manufacturing in the colonies, With independence came the freedom to innovate invent, and manufacture. As wee moved into the Old Northwest, from the Appalachians to the Mississippi north f the Ohio, the base f a market developed and products started to appear. This s the stry f one of them and one of the great American companies that developed and built it;
Pretty much all the modern conveniences and tools have a similar history. whether it was John Deer’s steel plow, Oliver’s hilled steel plow that could break the prairie soil, Howe’s sewing machine, Colt and Winchester ‘s guns, not to mention many British invention perfected and manufactured at scale in the US. Bu the time the twentieth century rolled around the US was the behemoth of industrial production, outproducing 2d place Germany and 3d place Britain easily. The twentieth century really was the American century. But we got complacent.
The United States instituted the Bretton Woods agreement at the end of the 2 World War because we had attained so much economic power that we felt a bit guilty and realized that 1) we produced far more than we could consume, and 2) Hardly anybody could afford to buy from us, So we undertook to help the world get back on its feet, and not coincidently defeated the Soviet Union our only real rival. It worked quite well, although it is the underlying cause of our military-industrial complex which is now causing us so much trouble.
But with the end of the cold war, it became simply a habit, like a teenage girl cutting herself, and so with executives who couldn’t see beyond he next quarterly report, selling off assets and expertise it had taken generations to acquire. This is about one of the ;atest. Yes, it;s a bit sensationalist in its prsenttion but is essentially accurate.
A few notes: Right to repair started with Apple computer, it’s one of the reasons I don’t buy anything apple. They’ve lost one lawsuit about it already. BTW in the Philippines, you can get your iPhone fixed on the street in real time for a couple bucks. Also, Robbie Starbuck recently blew up Deere’s DEI plan just as he has with Tractor Supply and Harley=Davidson. Interesting that I used to be a top 10% Valley pivot control technician. It wasn;t unusual for some of our larger clients to send one of their hired men to school wit us, to learn the basics. Sure they were never going to be able to do what I did but as one farmer told me as I went into the third day trying to find the problem on hos machine. “If it was easy, I;d fi it myself.” And that was fine, most summers a short week for me wwas 69 hours, neither my boss nor I wanted me screwing with the stupid problems. John Deere has competitors, like Valley they may not be at quite the same level but they have names you already know, and red paint s pretty too.
Jordan Peterson with RFKJ on the great partisan shift
My main caveat here is to not forget that LBJ was more of a mainstream Democrat than Kennedy was. JFK was actually closer to Goldwater’s view. Other than that he’s pretty much spot on.