This starts in the 50s and and seems they argue for Land Reform. Maybe that was part of it. But I say these are far better reasons:<p>1. A local government friendly to the US. Gov type did not matter.<p>2. US Workers starting to want medical benefits, by the late 60s, hardly anyone would take a job without benefits. This includes sick time.<p>3. Environment Controls starting in the 60s. I think this is a big one.<p>4. High Wages in the US<p>5. Improved intercontinental flights and cheap shipping. I think in the 60s the US merchant was quickly being outsourced to cheap countries.<p>6. An of course corporate greed and the rush to make Wall Street happy.<p>You just need to look at ROC in the 90s, lots of companies started moving manufacturing there because Japan and Taiwan was getting too expensive.<p>Now I think they are slowly moving out of ROC to places it SE Asia like Vietnam.
From the title, and skimming over this article, I notice an irony: the analysis is "short" by Eastern standards<p>They're only talking about the last 100-200 years. That's significant on the American time scale, but insignificant on a Chinese one.<p>It's interesting to me that older cultures like the Chinese, Japanese, and the Maya view history as cyclical, while Americans tend to have more a narrative of "linear progress", or even "manifest destiny" (a term I heard in grade school but probably didn't really understand until being an adult)<p>---<p>I think Ray Dalio's explanation is the most concise and takes into account the cyclical nature of history (and wow this video has 55 M views now)<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8</a><p>Roughly speaking, [edited] China and India likely had most of the world GDP for more than 1000 years [1] ... you can think of it as a miracle for them to rise again, or just part of a cycle.<p>And there are absolutely cycles in history, just ones that are longer than any "news" article tends to talk about<p>I also think Americans are now waking up to a cyclical view. Everyone is talking about how this is the "first" generation to make less money than their parents, or the "first" to have shorter life span<p>But it's only "first" if you don't recognize the cycles! That's understandable because of America's history, but it is a limited analysis<p>---<p>[1] edit: I looked deeper into this, and I agree it's flimsy, as mentioned below. But I think the larger point still stands -- it's a only a "miracle" if you're looking at a certain time frame, and n=1