While the New Global View (NGV) that took form at Breton Woods during the closing days of World War II was very far sighted, there was a blind spot in the visionaries’ eyesight.  This blind-spot led to a flaw in the foundation - a flaw that would not become obvious for a few decades. 
 
America and the world suffered through the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  It emerged from the Great Depression decade right into the Second World War.  In less than five years America emerged from World War II as the major world power still standing on its feet, and a world leader. 
 
The differences in the pre-war and post-war standard of living of the average American is staggering.  A formidable middle class was born, and it prospered.  For much of the rest of the war-torn world, the pre-war and post-war differences were none existent, or even negative.  
 
That gap between the average American’s standard of living and that of much of the rest of the world grew enormous in the two or three decades following WW II. 
 
The problem is that the planners and seers did not, could not, envision that unprecedented postwar American socioeconomic explosion, and that blindsided them.  Their vision was necessarily constricted by their own experience.  They based their predictions of what was possible in their post-war vision for the world on the model of their own pre-war experiences. 
 
You can see why if you can look at the situation through their eyes.  Their experience of the decade and a half preceding Breton woods was the foundation upon which they necessarily had to build their vision.  The blueprint of that foundation was that of world-wide depression leading up to the most disastrous war in recorded history.  It is little wonder that, despite their amazing foresight, they could not foresee what was to evolve in the post-war United States, Europe and Japan.
 
In the pre-war world, the socio-economic gap between the haves (America, largely rural, among them) and the have-nots in most of the rest of world wasn’t all that great.  That unexpected post-war yawning gap, a gap that was much smaller in the planners’ pre-war experience, is important because the NGV was predicated on the much smaller historic pre-war gap.  The laudable idea was that the whole world could be brought up to, or at least approach, the American standard of living in the post-war age.
 
Instead, in the decades following WW II, the “American Dream” that the rest of the world was encouraged to aspire to receded gradually into the distance for the world’s aspiring citizens as the American economy exploded.  And that was the crack in the foundation of the NGV.  That widening gap was to come back to haunt the NGV in about four decades. 
 
And the leadership that inherited the plan, and the problem, was unfortunately not of the same stature as the planners.
 
To be continued …
 
Reference: The Rise and Fall of the American Middle Class: The Big Idea.