Now we look at Germany, which is slightly different from the two cases above mostly because it had no colonial empire. Its capital consisted mostly of agricultural land. Hyperinflation in the 20s shrank the value of its post-WWI public debts, but of course that experience also had the effect of scarring the nation. During/after the wars, asset losses (mainly foreign) were more significant than physical destruction (revolutionary expropriation, nationalisation like that of the Suez canal). Plus firms went bankrupt during the depression, meaning stock/bondholders lost out, which had the effect of lowering the cap-income ratio and thus inequality.
The US: lots of farmland (which meant value/acre wasn’t very high) + populated mostly by recent immigrants who couldn’t bring much capital with them, so capital low at first. This reflected structural differences in inequality compared to Europe, as landlords and wealth owners had less power in such a large country with plenty of arable land for the taking. After WWII, asset prices remained low, and we saw extremely progressive taxation and lots of government spending (New Deal), but no nationalisation (unlike in Europe—wonder why?). Recall that the US was never a true colonial power (at least not in the same way as the trailblazers over in Europe), and in fact had a negative net foreign capital during the 19th century. Also note the role of slavery in US wealth. Canada was similar to US but slightly different politically due to the legal influence of the UK (no tea partying for us).
