I wonder if our drive to become a space-faring species would have been stronger? WWII was noted for its high taxes and pseudo-voluntary rationing. Would we have devoted more of our budgets to science, technology, and industrial development? While we might currently have iPhone equivalents, due to the adoption of military technologies by the private sector, I don't know if we'd have such cheap genomic sequencing.
I wonder if we'd have a better sense of the relative importance of our efforts, or would we continue to mostly be a slacktivist society?