After WWII America was the only economy left with any productive capacity. It quickly turned that capacity from war materials to things for improving our lives and for things other countries needed. The Bretton-Woods agreement enabled the ramp-up of production by making the US dollar the currency of international trade, so other countries were anxious to supply any excess resources in trade for those dollars.
We even handed them out without getting a return of goods in many cases just so they would be valued and sought after in other economies. The world was technically functioning on the gold standard, but the US got to determine the exchange value of gold to US dollars for the rest of the world while it remained on the fiat regime it initiated during the depression in all domestic trading.
America remained an exporting nation with the luxury of producing the currency of trade until the seventies when it turned the corner and began importing as much as it exported. France, and others, expressed their objections to being confined by how much gold they could find/earn while the US pulled its currency mostly from its backside on demand. Nixon saw the future of global trading and ended our participation in Bretton-Woods, and the gold standard with it.
In between WWII and Nixon's move to a fiat currency America depended upon employers and the remnants of FDR's New Deal economics to provide the rapid growth of GDP it became famous for. Other nations, not being as advantaged to remain mostly intact through the war were more dependent upon their nations to provide for their needs via public purpose spending and work projects to rebuild their decimated countries and economies.
This contrast served as the basis of the many differences between the US and most other countries when it came to individual effort v. social spending. What most other countries view as benefits inherent in their citizenship, ie: healthcare, basic living needs, guaranteed employment, education, etc., are seen as products of meaningful employment in the US and the "markets" that emerged to serve those needs.
Capitalism is a fairly efficient means of distributing resources as long as it is contained within a closed system where workers are also consumers of the goods they produce. As soon as employers were allowed unfettered access to foreign labor that hadn't experienced the natural inflation of capitalism US workers began to lose ground. Without the guarantees other countries provided their citizens to fall back on, their status and ability to maintain a middle class deteriorated rapidly.
The cheaper imported goods were a net asset to the nation, but their benefits were not distributed with any semblance of equity as the markets were responsible for such distribution and no provision for balancing equity existed in American culture as it was required in other nations. This enabled the move toward America's oligarchy that was also perpetrated by a massive PR campaign of propaganda that vilified the government and various "others" as the source of any economic difficulty facing workers.
A large part of that propaganda revolves around personal responsibility and the evil of reliance upon the government for anything, even though the most dependent segment of our society is the wealthy who understand how their economy and money work. If the people ever figure out that "ANY" misery that can be mitigated with money creation at the federal level is entirely a "political choice", not economic reality, they can begin to demand more equity and take back their country.
