Socioeconomic effects of no world wars

[stevep]

Right but that's with the war. Without it why would the ruling class, and in europe that was who had the money, loosen their purses for a bunch of commoners? Sure they may give tiny handouts, better wages, maybe something looking like a healthcare system. But just enough to keep the elites in power, and the masses from revolution.

Fenwick

No! I'm talking about before WWI. Britain was already losing a lot of work to strikes in some areas and there was considerable trade union activism. In the US things were I believe more violent with frequent strike-breaking operations when unions tried to form up. Ultimately I thing the US generated enough wealth and production, possible due to Ford type methods of production that the bulk of the population gave an interest in the continuing of the current system. However conceivably it might have gone differently. Even more so in much of Europe without WWI shaking things up and weakening the established orders.

What I’m actually saying is that you might have had the ruling elite’s without the war, feel confident enough of their power to NOT give enough to the wider population and you get a pressure cooker effect. Eventually things give but in a nasty explosion.

Steve

 

[pacifichistorian]

Oh. I thought he was referring to some sort of tax that only aristocrats had to pay.

No, just the aristos get nailed: it's an inheritance tax of sorts, & the more your estate is worth, the more you pay...

OK, I also see it's better explained further down.

One thing you don't get without the wars is racial equality. Without the wartime migrations & war jobs demonstrating blacks could do jobs as well as whites, as well as the economic benefits of the work, you'd see a much more segregated U.S., & many much poorer blacks. Some of this is balanced by the migration of the Depression years; Depression is liable to be much longer without a war. You also are liable to see much more prevelant & open anti-Semetism & racism, even compared to OTL. Without the Holocaust to shock the world, it's liable to still be seen as perfectly acceptable. Signs "No Niggers, Chinks, Jews, or dogs" would not even raise an eyebrow most places in North America (& probably few places in Europe, either).

 

[BomberJacket]

Without a WWI, what becomes of Asia? The Qing had already fallen (and bully to that), and Japan already had Korea and Manchuria. Would the Japanese still have expanded their sphere of influence? Would there still have been a Chinese civil war, and if so, would the outcome have been an different? What about British Burma, French Indochina, Oceania, and the dim land of Etcetera?