- Long boom
The long boom refers to two distinct periods of economic growth - the sustained global period of economic growth following the
Second World War and the period in the 1990s of US economic growth.Postwar Boom: 1947-1973
The term the long boom is used by some historians to describe the period from approximately 1947 to the oil crisis of 1973 in which nearly all
OECD economies experienced strong year-on-year growth. This was in part achieved through a complex number of factors mostly planned at the end ofWorld War II . After the war, the major powers were determined not to repeat the mistakes of theGreat Depression . They established theBretton Woods system , setting up international institutions designed to ensure stability in theworld economy . This was achieved through a number of factors, including promotingfree trade , instituting theMarshall Plan , and the use ofKeynesian economics . An alternative explanation for this period is the theory of thePermanent arms economy which suggests that the large spending on the military helped stabilise the global economy.The economies of Japan, Germany, France, and Italy did particularly well, each of these countries caught up to and exceeded the
GDP of the United Kingdom for the first time during these years, even as the UK itself was experiencing the greatest absolute prosperity in its history (the UK Conservatives' re-election slogan in 1959 was "You've never had it so good"). In France, this period is often looked back to with nostalgia as the "Trente Glorieuses ", or "Thirty Glorious Years", while the economies of Germany and Austria were characterized by "Wirtschaftswunder ".Most developing countries also did well in this period, especially compared to the 1980s and 1990s, which were plagued by debt and financial crises, with the notable exceptions of
India andChina .Effects of the long boom
It had many social, cultural and political effects (not least of which was the demographic blip we call the
baby boomer s). Movements and phenomena associated with this period include the height of theCold War ,postmodernism ,decolonization , a marked increase inconsumerism , thewelfare state , thespace race , theNon-Aligned Movement ,import substitution , opposition to theVietnam War , the civil rights movement, thesexual revolution and the beginning offeminism , and a nucleararms race . In the United States, themiddle class began a mass migration away from the cities and towards thesuburbs . Thus, it can be summed up (at least for the middle class) as a period of stability and prosperity in which most people could get a job for life, a spouse, child, house, dog and picket fence.In the West, there emerged a near complete consensus against strong
ideology and a belief that technocratic and scientific solutions could be found to most of humanity's problems, a view advanced byU.S. President John F Kennedy in 1962. This optimism was symbolized through such events as the1964 New York World's Fair , and Lyndon Johnson'sGreat Society programs, which aimed at eliminatingpoverty in the United States. The optimism waned however in the 1970s as high oil prices hastened the transition to the post-industrial economy, and a multitude of social problems began to emerge.1990s US boom
The term was also used during the 1990s when the U.S. economy appeared to be doing particularly well and is the title of a book analyzing this period.
The book, written by Peter Schwarz, Peter Leyden, and Joel Hyatt and published in 1999, is in turn based on a "
Wired Magazine " cover story from 1997, by Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden. Both the article and the book declared optimistically that the late-90s technology-fueled economic boom would continue for another two decades, sending theNASDAQ index to ten thousand points, while technology would facilitate the elimination of environmental and social problems.References
*Philip Armstrong, Andrew Glyn & John Harrison, "Capitalism since World War II. The making and breakup of the great boom". 1st edition Fontana 1984, 2nd edition Blackwell 1991. (provides extensive bibliography)
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.