> The US was founded on individual rights and freedoms ... during the 1800s, scores of millions of people moved up from poverty into the middle class and beyond.
Woah! The US was founded on occupation and slavery. How do you think millions of people were able to move up out of poverty? Because the US was abundant in land and natural resources, which during the 1800s we stole from the native Americans and exploited in large part with slave labor (at first, later pseudo-enslavement as sharecroppers).
Yes I know about that theory. But it has problems.
When the US was founded, half of the states were slavers, the other half free. Guess which half prospered? The free North! Which stagnated? The slave South.
Did you know that the Slave South was unable to supply their troops? They were largely barefoot. The reason they were in Pennsylvania was to raid a shoe factory (but got smashed at Gettysburg instead). Towns and cities and industry sprouted up all over in the free North, not so much in the South.
The Civil War resulted in burning the South to the ground. Poof!
As for natural resources, why is resource-rich S. America mired in poverty? Why did the Indian nations never industrialize, and remained poor? Why did resource-poor Japan become super rich after being burned to the ground in WW2? Why did resource-rich Russia never become prosperous? Why did zero-resource Taiwan become a wealthy powerhouse? Why is resource rich Africa still stuck in poverty?
There is no connection between resource rich and prosperity.
> There is no connection between resource rich and prosperity.
This is false, and easily disproved by history. I don't have time right now to go through it point by point -- but will try to when I can get to it.
It's indisputable that had the US been resource poor -- in arable land and exploitable resources -- it would have never become a powerhouse able to not only sustain millions of incoming immigrants from Europe, but ultimately make them prosperous. And it got that arable land and exploitable resources by driving out the local inhabitants and stealing their land--that is not a "theory". The fact that much of the early economy needed to catapult the US to the top by cotton and tobacco, which was harvested by slaves and powered the factories in the non-slave states, is not a "theory" either.
> Guess which half prospered? The free North! Which stagnated? The slave South.
The slave owners were very prosperous. The majority of the population was slaves and they indeed were by definition impoverished. No need to build infrastructure for a slave population, no need for much in the way of cities either. The factories in the north were powered by the raw materials from the south. (It's the reason the North accepted the Slave south in the first place and later went to war to keep them in the Union.) The US got rich the same way the European countries became so prosperous in the 1600-1800s: occupying other lands that were resource rich, and extracting their resources, and where possible, using slave labor.
Edit: If you're talking about the _modern_ economy, then yes, I would agree with you to some extend. And you use the example of Taiwan -- which was impoverished by the way until 60 years ago. But remember this conversation is about "the founding the US" -- that's the economy being discussed, not one where TSMC emerges.
> Did you know that the Slave South was unable to supply their troops? They were largely barefoot. The reason they were in Pennsylvania was to raid a shoe factory (but got smashed at Gettysburg instead). Towns and cities and industry sprouted up all over in the free North, not so much in the South.
Guess where the north got their cotton to make those shoes? The south. The textile industries of the north would've never gotten their start without cheap cotton made possible by slavery.
> As for natural resources, why is resource-rich S. America mired in poverty? Why did the Indian nations never industrialize, and remained poor? Why did resource-poor Japan become super rich after being burned to the ground in WW2? Why did resource-rich Russia never become prosperous? Why did zero-resource Taiwan become a wealthy powerhouse? Why is resource rich Africa still stuck in poverty?
Every South American nation that tried to raise itself out of poverty had their government overthrown or their leader assassinated with the help of good ol' USA. Japan/S. Korea/Taiwan industrialized because USA decided they needed strong allies to counter Russia/China. Check out the grand area plans. Africa was colonized, exported millions of their people to slavery, and is continually destabilized by the west (corporations, world bank, IMF, etc) to perpetuate resource extraction.
The poor is kept poor so the rich can get richer. Why is food so plentiful and cheap? Slave labor. Read Tomatoland for a taste. Why are clothes so cheap? People are working for pennies to make those clothes. Why doesn't the iPhone price rise with inflation? There are millions of poor rural Chinese pounding for a chance to work at inhumane conditions for a few dollars a day. You think they make enough to pull their families out of poverty? Nope, it's mostly foreign companies that are reaping the bulk of the profit while continually pressing their costs (labor wages) down.
Woah! The US was founded on occupation and slavery. How do you think millions of people were able to move up out of poverty? Because the US was abundant in land and natural resources, which during the 1800s we stole from the native Americans and exploited in large part with slave labor (at first, later pseudo-enslavement as sharecroppers).