[az0xff]

I have a feeling that a lot of the advances of the Golden Quarter have a lot to do with the Cold War. Parties on both sides of the war were pushed to create progress in order to best those on the other side. That kind of fierce competition doesn't exist at the same scale in today's world.

Am I wrong?

[wolfgke]

The article says on this point:

"Conflict spurs innovation, and the Cold War played its part – we would never have got to the Moon without it. But someone has to pay for everything. The economic boom came to an end in the 1970s with the collapse of the 1944 Bretton Woods trading agreements and the oil shocks. So did the great age of innovation. Case closed, you might say.

And yet, something doesn’t quite fit. The 1970s recession was temporary: we came out of it soon enough. What’s more, in terms of Gross World Product, the world is between two and three times richer now than it was then. There is more than enough money for a new Apollo, a new Concorde and a new Green Revolution. So if rapid economic growth drove innovation in the 1950s and ’60s, why has it not done so since?"