It‘s remarkable how many people think paying higher wages won’t mean higher prices. You can see them cheer on higher wages for restaurant workers, and in the next breath rant about the price of eating at a restaurant. Can people really go through 13-17 years of education without learning how markets work?

My bad - it was by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau who wanted to deindustrialize Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan

>Said that, some Allied Generals didn’t want to destroy Germany, they were much more preoccupied with Communist Russia than with the Germans.

A handful. But that was hardly the typical view. Unconditional victory over Nazi Germany was the overriding goal of all the Allies in top policy-making roles. George Marshall actually wanted to deindustrialize Germany so it would be a half-starved agrarian society for a generation or two.

History was what we consider Classics today: Herodotus, Homer, Thucydides, Livy, Plutarch. Up until well into the 20th century, the works of Plutarch were probably the most read history in the West. They're essentially mini-bios of famous leaders and generals of antiquity, with an emphasis on their moral character.

These bios were instructive to Western elites, who were encouraged to champion the values demonstrated by Plutarch's nobler subjects - courage, loyalty, civic-mindedness. If you were an educated man in the 19th and early 20th century, you were expected to be able to talk about Pericles, Alcibiades, Caesar, etc.