But isn't the whole reason lower class job salaries increased in the USA was simply because they had just won a world war?
I do not know enough about the reasons for affluence in the 50s, but surely it was in large part to success in the war?
If so, how could one suggest the minimum wage is just raised without it causing mass unemployment in the present?
I must be misunderstanding something.
"Winning a war" is surprisingly useless, economically.
A higher minimum wage would certainly not create "mass unemployment". Most research points to unemployment remaining about the same. That's because there are different mechanisms involved that work in opposite directions.
Firstly, very few people would actually lose their jobs. These are the people who create a value of, say, 7$/h, and would therefore be a net loss if their wage were raised above that level.
But that's quite rare. Most people working for minimum wage create value >= their wage. Currently, that value is "captured" by their employer and/or by the customers. Raising the minimum wage would just redistribute that surplus value: Instead of getting a Happy Meal for $6, the customer may have to pay $6.25. And instead of making $1 on the sale, McDonald's may only make 75cents. The employee gets 50cents extra.
Since, by definition, these are the poorest people, any extra cash they get is usually also spent rather quickly, If our employee uses their extra $100 for this month to get his shower fixed, it means extra business for a plumber. Compare to the current situation, where those $100 end up with McDonald's shareholders, and customers, who may use it to buy more shares and inflating the S&P500 without any effect in the real economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Agreement_on_German_Ext...
This is currently a bit of a sore point with some Greeks...
Why do you think the USA automobile market exploded post-war? It's because the two biggest automobile manufactures - Germany and Japan - were flattened to smouldering ashes and took around 30-40 years to recover.
That's why the USA auto industry declined on an enormous scale after the 80's, because in the end the USA was never automobile king. There was never the "good old Detroit days". It was just a temporary market vacuum that the USA capitalised on, while Germany and Japan, who simply were better at making cars (debatable of course, but they make more money and that's probably the most reliable metric here), were rebuilding their entire country from catastrophe.
I'd credit an increased US appetite for goods, a huge influx of trained workers (trained by the military for war purposes) and a excess war-related manufacturing capacity turned to domestic goods with the prices reduced by volume manufacturing.
All of which could be called "because the US won".
What's very sad is when you read a little further on about the USA economic decline after 1970 to today...
Anyway thank you for letting me know I was being a dingus!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United...
WWII definitely effected the US less than a lot of countries though that is for sure. But I think certain industries benefited more from USA's post-war advantage than others (automotive maybe being an example).
Toyota had made less than 2000 vehicles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_AA#Toyota_passenger_car...
Neither was Germany. Hitler started pushing the people's car in 1934 or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#1932.E2.80.931938:_...
They were building nice cars in Germany, they just weren't building a lot of them.
Meanwhile Ford had produced ~15 million Model Ts and 4 million Model As prior to 1932 (when production of the Model A was stopped).
http://www.jato.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/JATO-Global-C...
GM VAG and Toyota all have similar shares of the global market. Depending on how you want to nitpick you can make The Americans, Germans or Japanese look like the dominant player in global vehicle sales but it's really too global of an industry to draw the lines based on the country the CEO's office happens to be in.
Secondly, we are talking about post-war USA, so very generally '45 -> circa '70, not 2016 and the modern globalised world that are not representative of the world back then where even the internet didn't exist.
There were a lot of factors surrounding WW2 which contributed to the success of the US afterwards, but they're nowhere near as simple as the fact that they won.
If anything, the most immediate outcome of the victory is a sudden influx of unemployed soldiers needing jobs, which causes downward pressure on wages.
You had fewer soldiers coming back than you had shipping off. You also had worldwide demand for manufactured goods to meet, and Europe lost basically its entire infrastructure and nearly an entire generation of working age men.