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Comment by Razengan | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: How much of it is thanks to the US being far away and largely untouched by all the wars in Europe, especially WW2, while still ostensibly profiting from them?

And then being the ones to end it with the strongest display of force?

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The US became a country in 1783 (conclusion of the Treaty of Paris). In 1789, France had a revolution which kicked off the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars which lasted until 1814. The US was indirectly involved in this war because of dueling embargoes by Britain and France and counter-embargoes by the US (which eventually escalates into the War of 1812). After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, there are essentially no major European wars until 1914. The US became the largest economy somewhere around 1880-1890, and it only started industrialization around the 1830s, well behind Britain and France.

Basically, to summarize, in the time period between US independence and before the US became the dominant country in terms of economic power, there really weren't any major European wars for the US to be untouched by.

Not much. The US had demonstrated vast industrial capability prior to WW2 and had long since passed Britain, Germany and France as the world's largest economy and manufacturing center. It had also proven itself as one of the primary centers of invention prior to WW2 and throughout the industrial revolution. The US expansion west and the further development of cities including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle and others, is another example of how the US still had a lot of growth left just to fill into its own territory regardless of WW2.

The present alignment of global economies has seen the US return to a normalized position in terms of both GDP and manufacturing share globally. The temporary artificial expansion after WW2 lasted for roughly 40 years. During that time, the US spent vast treasure protecting other nations, rather than annexing territory or attempting to conquer other nations and plunder their resources (eg: Western Europe, Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan).

A large part of it but it's ww1 that really sealed the deal: http://online.wsj.com/ww1/wall-street

None of it, technically. The U.S. became "the world's largest economy" before WW1.

I wasn't sure, so I had to look it up. But, it seems like losvedir may be correct.

According to these numbers [1], the U.S. was the largest single country economy several years before 1914. And, if these numbers can be trusted, its growth trajectory would have sustained that position even without WWI.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Maddison_statistics_of...

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