https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
What happened in 1971? The Nixon Shock, which is when the dollar stopped being convertible to gold after it became evident that the US did not have the gold it claimed to have.
The gold standard stuff is hilariously reductionist.
Not really. Ending the dollar's convertibility into gold obviously had a severe impact on how foreign economies viewed the US and the dollar. I think it's "hilariously" ignorant to pretend that this wasn't a factor.
The economic reality for the US was that, before this, we just had to print money for the value of $100 worth of gold. Meanwhile, other countries had to produce actual goods or services that were valued at $100 worth of gold.
As multiple countries started repatriating their gold, the US does a rugpull and says we're done with that? It was effectively a US default on debt (which would have happened if we allowed repatriation anyway, because we didn't have enough gold to pay back all of our creditors who wanted their gold).
Yes, there were quite a few factors happening concurrently with this. But I don't see how it's simple to disentangle the effective default on debt denominated in the global reserve currency with all the other global economic volatility at the time. Laundry-listing other things that happened at the same time is not an explanation.
Edit: Just want to point out that, IMO, the real problem was the US was defaulting on our debt. What Nixon did was just like an escape hatch for it where the US did not have to call it what it was and we also got to keep the gold. I agree with you in the sense that I think bad things would have happened with or without Nixon ending the gold standard. But I view that event as a clear sign and catalyst or accelerant for all the volatility that ensued immediately after. I still think it's crazy the US ended up on top after this anyway.
Reconstruction of Europe, huge population boom, control over new overseas territory, massive reduction in competition from European nations which had lost their colonies (and a large part of their own native labour force), huge investments in housing & infrastructure, it's hard to overstate just how massively growth focused the years from 1945-1965 or so were. The closest comparison would be the massive growth that China has from the mid-90s til recently.
The outburst of left wing and cultural radicalism in the late 60s, the Vietnam war, heavier US involvement in central America, the decline in corporate profits in the 70s, the development of computing technology and information automation, all of these are connected with the fundamental saturation and then decline in the growth capacity of US imperial economic power...
When limits to growth are hit, the response is usually some kind of crisis -- because capitalism requires continuous growth. War either colonial or against other colonial powers, social turbulence, etc. etc.
Dropping the gold standard was just one of the panic-moves performed by US capital interests to try to salvage things. And honestly, it likely had little to no effect.
After the mid-90s there was a reprieve from this for a bit, as the collapse of the USSR and the opening of China to western industrial interests opened up new economic horizons. Which now seem to be closing off.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
I don't see manned missions to the moon every year from NASA anymore, do you?