Source: TW
Like everything else in politics, US aid to the Brits in WWII and their later mediocre economic record have generated an enormous amount of stupid prose.
One of my favorites, which I often think of, in the same way one compulsively peels the bandage back to look at the gangrene, is the argument that Germany benefited from having to rebuild everything from scratch, which supposedly allowed modernization, while Britain was stuck with older factories. Just as y’all would be better off if I burned your house down.
But having your industrial base physically destroyed is a massive disadvantage:
- Loss of physical capital that took decades to accumulate
- Loss of skilled workers (both from deaths and displacement)
- Disruption of business networks and relationships
- Need to divert resources to basic reconstruction that could have gone to improvement
- Loss of working capital
- Disruption of transportation infrastructure
- Loss of technical documentation and institutional knowledge
While Britain’s industrial plant may have been somewhat worn from the war effort and in need of updating, having functioning factories, skilled workers, and intact infrastructure was a significant advantage compared to having to rebuild from rubble.
Germany’s stronger economic performance came despite this disadvantage, not because of it. The real causes lay more in policy choices, institutional structures, and economic reforms, not in any supposed advantage of starting from zero.