Low inflation

All you know about a timeline is that the cost of living in the United States is only half again what it was in 1950 at the PoD.
What else can you deduce?
 

Straha

Banned
the USA is called the north american confederacy,a gorilla is president,Ayn Rand was the first president to go on the moon and the new articles of confederation replaced the constitution after washington was shot in 1795
 

Straha

Banned
well you didn't specify a POD before so I justsaid something random...

some ideas

1 a better space program leads to cheap orbital manufacturing which causes massive price lowerings

2 a second great depression from 1960-1970 that gives the idea that inflation is bad

3 a slatewiper virues wipes out 1/2 the population and goods are cheaper because theres ltos of goods and few people
 
I just worded it awkwardly.
BTW, I recognize the L. Neil Smith reference in your first post.
 
cheat

Instead of restarting at 100 when ever the Cost of living reaches over 200 and the peons start noticing, the politicans just cheated and artifically picked the numbers to keep it low. :rolleyes:
 
I would guess that it would have something to do with going back on the gold standard or having the government adopt and keep a very conservative, low-spending fiscal policy.
 
None of the previous suggestions would explain the cutting of living standards in half.

A combination of the following: The US returns to protectionism. Europe is lost to the Soviets. The government socializes large sectors of the economy by either tightly regulating them or by nationalizing the assets. The government places prohibitive levels of taxation upon investments. Basically, the US follows Argentinias economic policy of the last 50 years. :p
The south tries to secede again over the civil rights issue, sparking a second civil war, but this time both sides have nukes.
 
No cold war

Russia goes reasonably democratic in 1948 as Stalin drops dead and his associates kill each other off. The US does a traditional disarmament and steadily pays off the national debt like we traditionally do, and it's all over.
We might never go off the gold standard. We sell off our gold supplies to keep the price of gold low, and nobody buys it because after WWII there is no cold war to ever make people flee to gold as a store of value.
Without the cold war would we keep paying for research and development? If we build the Interstate Highway System as a military project every time we have a recession as a countercyclical effort, and keep the FTC to prevent the corporations from restricting production to raise prices, and get rid of tariffs to keep the corporations honest by inducing competition, and maybe get people to join the armed forces by offering college scholarships a la the GI bill so we could keep technological progress going to keep inflation low by increasing productivity.
 
In economy there's a rule, that developed areas have highest cost of living... so, without really great cataclysm it's impossible to reduce cost of living by half in forty years. Sorry.
 
By "half again" I meant 50% greater than 1950. And I meant dollars and cents, not the CPI. In OTL the ratio is 7 or 8, so something which cost $1.00 in 1950 costs about $7.50 (no quibbles, please). In the ATL it costs $1.50.
 
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