AHC: Continued Saving After WW2

[Pesterfield]

With the war over it was boom times as the rationing of the war went away, but is there anyway to get a compromise between conspicuous consumption and the lean times of the war?

How can we continue getting people to keep collecting cans, grease, paper, and everything else that can be reused?

Basically can the U.S. have its boom times, but keep the ideas about recycling and reuse from the war years?

 

[Typo]

It has to be a cultural thing, recycling doesn't actually depress demand so I don't see why it would cancel out the post-war Boom.

 

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

The boom occured on a far greater scale than mere recycling, if anything a lean, still rather frugal populace would ultimately be a slight hitch in the boom but nothing more. It's basic supply and demand, people coming back from the war spent their money, and they spent a lot of it, a near decade of economic depression followed by strict rationing will do that to the average person.

 

[Pesterfield]

So maybe just have the government keep the propoganda up?

Encourage recycling to win the Cold War just like WW2. Can it last to make a more enviromentally conscious America?

 

[Typo]

So maybe just have the government keep the propoganda up?

Encourage recycling to win the Cold War just like WW2. Can it last to make a more enviromentally conscious America?

Somehow I think that's actually pretty plausible in the 50s. I mean this would be before environmentalism became a political issue, therefore less likely to be opposed by business interests.

 

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

Somehow I think that's actually pretty plausible in the 50s. I mean this would be before environmentalism became a political issue, therefore less likely to be opposed by business interests.

This would be interesting too to see earlier developments and such, I think there'd be an earlier lobbying for developing alternative energies, maybe Carter's energy self-sufficiency plan might wind up getting implemented after all.

 

[MerryPrankster]

"Drive smaller cars! Oil funds Commies!"

Seriously, I think Tom Friedman said it was the Soviet Union's energy exports that funded a lot of its shenanigans--in the 1970s, with high oil prices, you had Afghanistan, aid to foreign troublemakers, etc.

Oil prices fall in the 1980s and pain ensues.