So why was there a boom instead of a bust, after WW2?

https://www.nibcoalition.com/faqs

Because we started from almost nothing, we needed everything to build a war machine. The need to increase production wound up increasing efficiency and often lowering prices.

Didn't happen overnite, but Ford built a factory, and got the speed up to a bomber a day. For that era, that was incredible.

After the war, the lessons learned remained. The machine tools were still there, you could use them to produce anything.

All you needed was demand.

When the soldiers came home, Congress passed bills to help them get started. Cheap small home loans, cheap college education, etc.

The result was those small homes got filled with babies, soldiers came back horny. They then bought larger cars, washing machines, they filled their homes with babies and appliances.

That's what we call demand, in spades.

It could have been a bust. If we had listened to conservatives, it would have been.

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Am...e+rise+and+fall+of+amer,stripbooks,111&sr=1-1

 

There were many reasons that FDR was so eager to get the US involved in Europe's WW 2. It's is unlikely that he predicted the degree to which the US could use stolen German technology but he was determined to get the US into the European conflict in spite of the fact that about 80% of the American people were against yet another war for international war profiteers.

While I'm sure that there were many ways that the US benefited from WW 2, Operation Paperclip and related US plundering of German inventors and inventions were among the most significant.
For example, more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers and technicians were taken from Germany to the US to make the US the military superpower it became.

"6 things the US stole from the Nazis during WWII"
http://www.businessinsider.com/6-things-us-stole-from-germans-during-wwii-2015-5

EXCERPT "The Germans in World War II were at the forefront of industrialized warfare.

They produced the first jet-powered bomber, developed the first tilt-rotor plane, and discovered fission. In most cases, Allied scientists and planners struggled to close the technological gaps exposed by German advances.

When possible though, they just stole everything they could find and called it a day."CONTINUED


"8 Nazi German Inventions The US Made Use of After WWII"
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/top-10-inventions-discovered-wwii.html?chrome=1

1. Guided Weapons
2. Long-Range Missiles
3. Airborne Units
4. Helicopters
5. Rockets
6. Methamphetamine
[SIZE=5][B][B]7. Jet power[/B][/B]
[B][B][SIZE=5][B]8. Night Vision[/B][/SIZE]
[/B][/B][/SIZE]

 

Increased manufacturing capability after massive government spending during the war + big customers in Europe, which was going through massive re-building effort, - and Japan too.

#6 really took root here.

 

That's very true, and not just here.

Nearly everyone in the Tour de France was using it. It was OTC, anyone could buy it. Even after it became illegal, it took a while before it stopped being something people just did.

 

Methamphetamine, (aka Ritalin) like many medications that are abused has countless legitimate applications today for people suffering from diseases that cause fatigue.

During WW 2, certain Allied pilots and troops took Amphetamine (aka Adderall) to stay awake while German pilots and troops took Pervitin which was the brand name for Methamphetamine.

 

Biden's policies are not like FDRs, very different in fact.

FDR used taxation, inflation, and borrowing to put people back to work during The Depression.

Joe R Biden used borrowing to pay people not to work in the recovery after COVID.

 

Before WWII FDR met with John Maynard Keynes.
FDR called Keynes a mathematician and Keynes called FDR an economic illiterate.

FDR did not want to do deficit spending to boost the economy. But then along comes WWII and he has to do it and the economy takes off. But unemployed men are sent off to fight and the economy produces stuff to be blown up by the Japanese and Germans.

The war ends, the boys come home, women give men their jobs back, but now the government believes in deficit spending and we get TELEVISION.

So we got television brainwashed consumerism with planned obsolescence.

And the economics profession does not compute and report the annual depreciation of automobiles and other durable consumer junk.

How many cars have Americans trashed since Sputnik? There were 200,000,000 cars in the US in 1994.

 

https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rig...s-and-the-revolution-in-economic-thought.html

John Kenneth Galbraith was one of Keynes' fans and was involved in price controls during WWII.

https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/08/galbraiths_impo.html

 

Central planning assured U.S. productivity and victory. Rebuilding the world after the war made the U.S. rich and central to all virtually activities. Lack of foresight led to industrial and social decline. Success has a way of destroying itself.

 

Main difference, IMO, now vs. then is the building and investing in traditional and societal infrastructure and the tax dollars not being hi-jacked by special interests and corporations. The current R (read as Trump) party now defines all of this as socialism.

 

It could have something to do with distribution of money and reducing inequality. The massive spending during WW2 very much contributed to the growth of new areas, on the West Coast and deep inside Ohio.

Also don't forget the Lend-Lease program. The U.S. had sold war supplies to the other allies, through loans to them.

The U.S. was also just coming out of the Great Depression at that time. Things didn't suddenly dramatically improve in the immediate first few years after the war, but the war did remove many men from the ranks of the unemployed and helped drive up wages, both due to the temporary increased demand but also due to decrease in labor availability. Female employment also increased after the war.

Some of this "increased productivity" was fueled by debt and was not sustainable. A small amount of it may have also been fueled by patriotic feelings.

There was also the Immigration Act of 1924, which had dramatically cut off immigration in the wake of the Great Depression. It's possible productivity went up because there has not a fresh supply of immigrants, who typically work in what are considered "lower productivity" jobs.

Remember, the 1960s were the "Hippie" generation, and then the 1970s had a Recession, believed to be triggered by the "Energy Crisis" (OPEC) and inflation caused by the Vietnam War, and the U.S. also began running a trade deficit with Japan.

 

Yes, I mentioned FDR because Joe Biden has a picture of FDR over the mantlepiece.

It was Frances Perkins who worked out the details for implementing the new deal.

My point was the New Deal was intended to get the nation back to work. And it is true that WW2 did a far better job of it.

But today's Democrats want to pay people to stop working, and I'm not sure Joe's war in Ukraine is going to help the economy the way WW2 did. I think he's got it all wrong to repeat the boom after WW2.

 

My bad: Frances Perking worked out the main points of the New Deal and continued keeping labor on board during WW2.

Joe's got it all wrong and won't repeat the boom after WW2.

 

My parents lived through the depression and WW2. I spoke to them and my grandparents about it many times.

FDR did not help with the Depression, and life was even tougher during WW2 due to the war rationing. Immediately after the war there was some turmoil and unemployment.

What got the USA on top was the USA was I undamaged from the war and rebuilt the destroyed Europe and Asia.

 

This society has promoted the idea of people thinking of themselves as workers. People even have names based on jobs, Farmer, Smith, Plumber.

Technology has changed how society works but we have mostly been indoctrinated to not change how we think. Consumerism has replaced serfdom. Accounting should have been mandatory in the schools since Sputnik. Everyone should concentrate on Net Worth. The United States could have had a 3-day workweek by the 90s. Instead we create unnecessary work with planned obsolescence to play status games with each other. My under engineered garbage is newer and more expensive than your under engineered garbage.

Keynes was talking about a 15-hour work week for grandchildren back in the 1930s. Keynes never saw a television commercial for automobiles.

Check out the book:

Voyage from Yesteryear by James P Hogan

 

As did my parents.

FDR put millions to work, and with all the other things he did, it absolutely helped.

While the war was tough on everybody, there were fewer people hungry, and most were working and bringing home a check, which they used to buy groceries. For the first time, a lot of women worked..

Sure, but you're talking about more government programs. Doesn't say a thing about the GI Bill and other such programs.

 

WW2 (for the US) was largely funded via the savings of US Citizens via war bonds and mostly by raising taxes. This was politically impossible to accomplish until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Once everyone was mad/scared enough to tolerate handing most of their wealth over to the state, it stayed that way for decades after the Axis were obliterated, to fund the cold war of course.

And through it all, corporations (Ford is a perfect example) funded both sides. Lawsuits Claim Ford, GM Aided Nazi War Effort - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
While Ford was building our bombers, they were also building Nazi army trucks with slave labor, and Standard Oil was providing the Nazis with the leaded fuel additive critical in all their high performance engines. Many companies bent over backward to get around the sanctions, but companies like Ford, GM, GE, IBM, Standard Oil and Chase Bank all had subsidiaries in Nazi-occupied Europe (if not in Germany proper) that they controlled and profited from while also profitting from supporting the Allied war effort, bolstered with the infusion of our war bonds and war taxes.

Maybe that's why politicians keep saying this and that are 'as bad as Pearl Harbor'...

"War is a racket" indeed ...thats why we have 'cold wars' the 'war on drugs' and now the 'war on climate change.'

Do I understand correctly that you're suggesting we need a new WW2-style invigoration of the economy? If so, that would suggest taking a lot more of everyones money and giving it to the big corporations again...

 

Not quite. My parents & grandparents were rural Texas and Louisianna. They were financially poor but they were self-sufficient as were most people in the 1930's when 1/3rd of the nation lived on a farm or grew a significant amount of their own food. FDR's programs were more for "city folk".

My grandparents viewed govt handouts as admitting you failed. They used to say they "were never on the dole", they never took any of FDR's "assistance".

The Texas side did not need "jobs", they had jobs running the farm. My Texas ancestors had land, cattle, gardens, streams to fish, wells for water, hunting. The extended family all lived togethor or very close by and worked togethor. They traded with neighbors, and sold some things for some money to go into town to see a movie or buy something special.

The Louisianna side was similar.

It was when the WW2 rationing started that times got tough. When the car tire went out you might not be able to trade for a new one because rubber was rationed. Same for gas, oil, cloth, sugar, etc.

<>

Standard (non-political) thought now is that FDR deepened and extended the depression. After WW2, the USA was the only industrial nation not destroyed so demand for USA industry and products was global and through the roof. Thats what put the USA into being #1.

 

That's not what mainstream historians or economists think.

An international analysis shows that the more money that the government put into fighting the depression, the faster a government got out of it.

Most macroeconomists think the New Deal should have been larger.

 

Thats political "thinking", it started when obama was president and he began pushing Keynes. Before that the academics were going in the direction that the govt made it worse through price fixing and other activities. But can't have Keynes look bad when obama is pushing Keynes spending.

Actually Keynes wrote that in difficult economic times the govt should cut taxes, do not add regulations (maybe cut existing regs), increase deficit spending. When the economy recovers, then the govt raises taxes to pay off the deficit and resumes any regs that were cut. Thats not democrat economics.

 

1) Try FDR.... To quote one Republican: "We're all Keynesian in a foxhole."

2) Nope, that's total BS.

3) It's also not how Republicans do it. Let's start with something simple, since 1980, which party has racked up the most debt? Btw, the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan cost about 5 trillion... I mention that because I don't think this chart is complete; but it does tell the tale:


It's not the debt, by itself, it's what you use it for. You go into a lot of debt to buy a house. That makes a lot of sense, or at least it used to. But if you blow it on hookers and cocaine, that's not good.

Republicans always blow it on the political version of hookers and coke...

 

Did I say Republicans were blameless? No I did not, I did not mention Republicans at all. You brought it up because you kow I am correct and you need to distract.

Keynes wrote that in an economic downturn the govt should deficit spend, cut taxes, do not increase regulations, to spur the economy. When the economy recovers, then the deficit spending stops, taxes are increased to pay the deficit, and govt regulation resumes its normal function.

NOBODY follows Keynes, not FDR nor Democrats nor Republicans. Keynes is a fake academic front so democrats can spend like fools. Republicans don't use Keynes as an excuse but they are fiscally irresponsible and corrupt just like democrats.

Read the research, FDRs policies did not save the nation from the depression. Read Keynes book. Education is the key to not being fooled by politicians.

 

ROFL

The same with Adam Smith. He used "Invisible Hand" one time and "education" eighty times but we don't hear republicans or democrats advocating mandatory accounting/finance in the schools.

 

Repeating crap doesn't make it better.

Btw, Keynes is not some sort of economic god. That's just plain weird.

 

$300 extra unemployment kept workers out of the workforce? TFG's $600 didn't seem too:


He cited a trio of studies from earlier in the pandemic, when the federal supplement was $600, which found only a minimal effect on employment — in one case, between 0.2% and 0.4%.

"It is reasonable to assume that the effect of supplements that are half as large would be considerably smaller," Baker said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/economy-business_joe-biden-really-paying-americans-not-work/6205724.html

Covid deaths went up in April, and the extra $300 ended in September

I guess Biden would've been better to gut the "job creators" taxes like TFG did?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/california-covid-cases.html