WW2 was not the cause for the recovery of the US economy. You do not put all your efforts into things that go up in smoke and then economically better your standing. You build things that others need and are willing to exchange for the things they built. If those things don't match you use an intermediary liquid item (money) that allows you to trade that which you do need for what others need from you. This is the only way to progress I've heard of.
He explained it later. War means the production of weapons and other war-related stuff. It's a boost for economy. But after the war soldiers com back and look for job and you don't need to produce that much of war-related stuff anymore. So the government decided to send soldiers to colleges to delay impact of new workforce. One problem solved.
Europe is in ruins, almost every strong nation is in ruins. They need to rebuild it. American economy left unscratched so they start to produce essential goods for Europe and lend money to buy this american stuff. That's why american economy went up. At least that's what he says.
I remember that I learned something similar during history lessons in high-school.
I did not watch the whole video but he does not seem to go into why wages stagnated in the 70s. While I'm not American and have not done the full analysis, I don't think it is coincidental that full blown worldwide debt based fiat currency started in 1971 and that many, many economic phenomena become apparent from 1971 onward. If I had to venture a guess however it is that the stagnation in wages and the discrepancy in profits is due to taxation provisions that unduly reward "hiding" money in business assets and punishes paying people more. Under unhindered market conditions this would not be possible.
He answers this in last 5-7 minutes of the video. For 150 years before 70ies the US experienced slight work-force shortage. So the wages went up and immigrants were always welcomed.
During 70ies, he says, 4 things happened.
Computers, they made work more efficient and lowered required number of people to produce needed results.
Europe and other big economies recovered after WW2 and didn't need american goods anymore. They started to make their own cheaper and better stuff. So now America needed cheaper goods and workforce and so it outsourced a lot of thing. (Hence the rise of China)
Two reasons that lowered demand for workforce. And here are two reasons reasons the supply of workforce rose.
Women went to work. Millions of them.
Immigrants.
So previous lack of workforce became oversupply and employers didn't have to pay more money. Or so he says. Seems logical to me.
As far as I can tell he is some sort of Neo-Marxist. Marxism is an unethical, envy based belief system with equally flawed economics to explain itself. It ought not be revisited except as a cautionary tale.
I don't like such ideas very much either. Those ideas that are somewhat good sound somewhat unrealistic. And things tend to go horribly wrong in the end. I know this because I live in post-communistic country(Ukraine) and those 70 years left bad lasting impression. I can experience democracy/capitalism built on remains of communism myself and it looks ugly. But still some ideas are good and parts of those ideas can be implemented in real life.
Every idea is somewhat unethical and envy-based from a perspective of an older and currently implemented one. Feudalism->democracy/capitalism.
Observation; he states a lot of facts but does not connect them to one another in a reliable cause and effect way. He makes flimsy connections like saying that profits are borrowed to workers at interest. The mere fact that one knows facts does not give one insight into the underlying logic, this is something that plagues the economics community.
He does connect them. The whole point of his vision is that current crisis was set in motion long time ago and is a result of flaws of capitalism and bad decisions.
US after the WW2 was prosperous. -> During 70ies things changed. Lack of workforce disappeared and so did wage growth. Effectiveness of the work rose. People started to borrow money against their houses to support their spending habits. Companies put their growing profits(stable wages, rising productiveness) into the banks. Banks started to lend those money to people. People spent more money. -> Debt grows. -> Economy was hit by the dot-com bubble. To help the economy banks were asked to lower the interest on loans. People go on a spending spree. People bought houses. -> Shit hit the fan. For the second time bubble poped. No bubbles left.
So now government pours money into the economy so things doesn't go very bad right now.
And the US owes a lot of money to other countries...
One more push and...
Things he says do make sense.
