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 of World War II. After the war, the major powers were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the Great Depression. They established the Bretton Woods system, setting up international institutions designed to ensure stability in the world economy. This was achieved through a number of factors, including promoting free trade, instituting the Marshall Plan, and the use of Keynesian economics. An alternative explanation for this period is the theory of the Permanent 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 and China.

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 boomers). Movements and phenomena associated with this period include the height of the Cold War, postmodernism, decolonization, a marked increase in consumerism, the welfare state, the space race, the Non-Aligned Movement, import substitution, opposition to the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution and the beginning of feminism, and a nuclear arms race. In the United States, the middle class began a mass migration away from the cities and towards the suburbs. 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 by U.S. President John F Kennedy in 1962. This optimism was symbolized through such events as the 1964 New York World's Fair, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, which aimed at eliminating poverty 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 the NASDAQ 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)