The War Got Us Out of the Depression?

That’s the claim.  World War Two got us out of the Great Depression.  It’s become an almost Pavlovian response.  Mention the end of the Great Depression, and the pre-programmed, rapid-fire response is “The-War-got-us-out-of-it!”  Ring the bell and the socialist dogs drool.  No thought about how such a thing could be– Just blind faith that it was so.

I heard one of the talk shows hosts (I think it was Limbaugh) bring this up recently.  The very same people who claim that W.W. II “got-us-out-of-the-Depression” are now the ones claiming that the current “Bush Lied, People Died/Inside Job” wars are dragging down the economy.  I don’t think the socialists can have it both ways.  We have troops in active fighting in what, four countries now?  I lost count, and it’s not “fighting” anymore, but “Kinetic Somethingorother” anyway.  We should be doing great about now if their Keynesian economic theories are correct.

Sure.  Just try this experiment with your own business or family; apply all your best efforts, using all your best resources, to build all your best products, for four years, go deeply into debt doing it, and then package up all of that best stuff, along with all your best workers, and send them overseas to be expended with no compensation.  Then build new houses for a German family and a Japanese family, going further into debt to do that, while you engage in years of litigation and appeals with a Russian family with no clear outcome.  See how rich you are at the end of it.

You can’t advocate two opposite ideologies at the same time.  One negates the other.  Either Keynesian theory is spot on, or it’s crazy.  Your perpetual motion machine either works or it doesn’t work.  Don’t claim both or you’ll look even more blitheringly stupid than you looked when you only said your perpetual motion machine generated a net energy output (oops; I’m assuming you know what “net energy output” means, which, if you believe in Keynesian economics, you don’t. Sorry).

PS.  I read several years ago that we don’t have “Infantry” anymore.  Oh no.  That would be much too.. “yesterday”.  Now we have a “Soldier-centric Force Structure” so it’s all new and shiny, you see.  Makes all the difference in the world.  To a moron.

Since having a “War Department” to fight real enemies sounded too unfriendly, and we now have the “Defense Department” and “Peace-Keeping Forces” instead, I figure it won’t be long before we have the “Department of Peace” that will bomb the shit out of you if you advocate liberty.  You’d better hope that the Peace Squad never shows up in your neighborhood.  It’ll be a bunch of government hippies shooting up your private flower pots.  Or something.

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8 thoughts on “The War Got Us Out of the Depression?

  1. Lyle, if you haven’t watched this I suggest you do. I’ve know this for a long time, but things like that helps spread this information to those who might not otherwise know about it. Or even fully understand it.

    B

  2. The Keynesians might have something to argue with if we ever actually did the whole “generate a surplus” thing that we could then use to stimulate the economy with during a recession. So far it’s never been tried.

    One thing is for sure, borrowing money and spending it isn’t Keynesianism.

    It’s just stupid.

  3. The other great lie about WWII (I’m a military history buff) is that the Nazis were supposedly far right politically, like the Tea Party or Republicans on steroids with an actual spine. Sorry, it stands for the National Socialist Party and it had many of the tendencies, desires (nay, wet dreams) of our own liberal left/progressives such as centralized control by the government, a strong aversion to any private firearms owndership, and heavy influence on many portions of the economy.

    It differs from today’s liberals in that a strong nationalism helped hold it together, and also encouraged wars of aggression. Of course, given that the current administration can’t just stop itself from bombing somebody new this week, maybe they have more in common than I thought. Just think how a few good Germans with some firearms might have stopped the rise of Hitler and we have all we need to know about why our Second Amendment rights are non-negotiable.

    “Never Again!” and “Molon Labe!”

  4. Oops, my typographical error of “owndership” even sounds German. A Freudian slip? My bad!

  5. “The war got us out of debt” isn’t true for the US as a whole, but was certainly true for universities and unions.

  6. I’ve never understood how diverting a bunch of your capital resources from productive uses into making huge piles of stuff you’re going to douse with gasolene and set ablaze, pushing everything that survives the fire off a boat into the ocean, is supposed to make the country richer.

    That is, after all, a fair description of the material cost of all-out warfare. It’s a ginormous potlatch — a dissipation of assets as has never been seen in the worst divorce.

  7. I think Keynesiantypes argument was that lend lease (not the destruction of war material) brought us out of the depression. That too is wrong, but I don’t think the traditional argument is that expending bullets ended the depression. Of course, before that they argued that nationalizing industry was bringing us out of the depression when all that nastiness in Europe messed up their plans.

    A few of the Austrian school types drew parallels between both the National Socialists and the Brits nationalizing industry… and carrying that on post WWII.

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