>>1445895Nigga, you were either an agrarian in the rural areas or a recent upwardly mobile urban worker for the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era. A solid, middle-class base in this country wasn't commonplace until the post-WWII era, where the government heavily subsidized former soldiers to buy houses outside of the city.
>How did the US become the preeminent economic power in the world?>It wasn't by making everyone ride a god damn bus everywhereAmerica was a global power at a time where rail and the streetcar were the methods of urban transportation. Some of the first affluent periphery communities that propped up were considered to be "streetcar suburbs". America still used rail for travel well into the Second World War, which was truly the moment the US became the "preeminent economic power" as opposed to just one of the great global powers. Not to mention, during the Second World War, gasoline and car use were rationed and restricted because car use was considered a luxury (which it was). America was able to become a superpower because it could outlast its opponents by making its citizens use non-automobile transportation. And this is all ignoring the fact that the entire globe was shattered by the war, with the convenient exclusion of the United States thanks to favorable geography.
Also, I really don't feel like going into the consequences of the highway into the decline of the American city, but one could argue the automobile helped decimate America's economic centers of power and made the nation reliant to petroleum-producing nations
