Western Europe’s postwar settlement was not an accident of prosperity — it was a deliberate package assembled by people who all remembered that mass unemployment had produced fascism. You are making the five choices. Watch growth, wages, social peace and the odds of another Franco‑German war respond — then run your settlement into the oil shock of 1973 and see what it deferred.
What each choice actually did
Questions you are deferring
1973: the scaffolding falls away
The boom rested on things nobody chose: cheap oil, a demographic bulge of young workers, and fixed exchange rates agreed at Bretton Woods. The dollar left gold in 1971 and the oil embargo of October 1973 quadrupled the price of energy. Test your package against that.