Top general tells Marines to be prepared for a big fight

apdst said:

The argument for the stealfromus package was that government spending stimulates the economy. Wouldn't spending money on a war do the same thing?

Click to expand...

Only if you have the tax base to support it. That's why it worked well in WWII to get the country out of the Great Depression (when the top marginal tax rate was 90%), but only increased the deficits when it was done in Iraq and Afghanistan under Bush.

ataraxia said:

Only if you have the tax base to support it. That's why it worked well in WWII to get the country out of the Great Depression (when the top marginal tax rate was 90%), but only increased the deficits when it was done in Iraq and Afghanistan under Bush.

Click to expand...

WW2 damn near bankrupted the country. That's why scrap drives and war bonds were so heavily pressed.

The reason the economy boomed after the war was because over one million working age men were no longer in the work force and there was a surplus of jobs.

apdst said:

WW2 damn near bankrupted the country. That's why scrap drives and war bonds were so heavily pressed.

The reason the economy boomed after the war was because over one million working age men were no longer in the work force and there was a surplus of jobs.

Click to expand...

Where are you getting this information? It's really bizarre. Imaginative, to be sure. But bizarre. No one, who knows any economics, thinks that. Is this something you have come up with yourself?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post–World_War_II_economic_expansion

ataraxia said:

Where are you getting this information? It's really bizarre. Imaginative, to be sure. But bizarre. No one, who knows any economics, thinks that. Is this something you have come up with yourself?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post–World_War_II_economic_expansion

Click to expand...

People who don't **** about history believe what you're claiming.

apdst said:

People who don't **** about history believe what you're claiming.

Click to expand...

Find me any actual historian or economist who thinks differently.

apdst said:

WW2 damn near bankrupted the country. That's why scrap drives and war bonds were so heavily pressed.

Click to expand...

That has nothing to do with it at all.

The drives were for several reasons, but none of them had to do with money.

Much of the items reclaimed were simply unavailable during the war. Rubber and Silk especially among them. These were imported commodities, most commonly from areas that were now in a war zone. So the only way to get them was from scrap.

Also with a lot of the labor force off to war, there was a shortage in manpower in making these commodities. And it was simply faster and easier to use scrap as opposed to mining and smelting.

And finally, it was for things that we suddenly had a huge need for, which was not provided in the regular ways. For example fat. Huge amounts of fat were collected door to door, because that is a major component in explosives and gunpowder. And we were producing such a huge amount of that for the war that the regular supply systems simply could not provide enough by themselves.

If you want to get a "birds eye" view of what some of that era was like, listen to some period radio broadcasts from the time. On wartime shows like The Whistler you can hear announcers encouraging housewives to save their bacon grease and turn it in to recycling stations. Or to bring their tires in for "capping" because most were only able to buy 1 set every 2 years because of rationing. Or after the war ended encouraging them to bring their cars in and have all of the "wartime substitute" fluids drained and replaced with "pre-war quality" lubricants. I mention The Whistler, because it was sponsored by the Signal Oil Company (now the AlliedSignal engineering company).



War bonds were something different. And it is a bit of a misnomer, because it was also a way to encourage circulation of currency. Much of the stagnation of the Great Depression was because of the hoarding of money. By encouraging the population to instead invest it that money was then available to be used to retool the economy.

WWII cost the US from around $350-450 billion dollars in total. All of the War Bonds sold (including the Liberty Bonds available between 1940-1941) came to around $130 billion. However, they were so popular that after the war they were converted into the Savings Bonds that we sill use today.

Oozlefinch said:

That has nothing to do with it at all.

The drives were for several reasons, but none of them had to do with money.

Much of the items reclaimed were simply unavailable during the war. Rubber and Silk especially among them. These were imported commodities, most commonly from areas that were now in a war zone. So the only way to get them was from scrap.

Also with a lot of the labor force off to war, there was a shortage in manpower in making these commodities. And it was simply faster and easier to use scrap as opposed to mining and smelting.

And finally, it was for things that we suddenly had a huge need for, which was not provided in the regular ways. For example fat. Huge amounts of fat were collected door to door, because that is a major component in explosives and gunpowder. And we were producing such a huge amount of that for the war that the regular supply systems simply could not provide enough by themselves.

If you want to get a "birds eye" view of what some of that era was like, listen to some period radio broadcasts from the time. On wartime shows like The Whistler you can hear announcers encouraging housewives to save their bacon grease and turn it in to recycling stations. Or to bring their tires in for "capping" because most were only able to buy 1 set every 2 years because of rationing. Or after the war ended encouraging them to bring their cars in and have all of the "wartime substitute" fluids drained and replaced with "pre-war quality" lubricants. I mention The Whistler, because it was sponsored by the Signal Oil Company (now the AlliedSignal engineering company).

War bonds were something different. And it is a bit of a misnomer, because it was also a way to encourage circulation of currency. Much of the stagnation of the Great Depression was because of the hoarding of money. By encouraging the population to instead invest it that money was then available to be used to retool the economy.

WWII cost the US from around $350-450 billion dollars in total. All of the War Bonds sold (including the Liberty Bonds available between 1940-1941) came to around $130 billion. However, they were so popular that after the war they were converted into the Savings Bonds that we sill use today.

Click to expand...

Material shortages, that's true. But the government sure as hell wasn't complaining when they got those materials for free.

apdst said:

Material shortages, that's true. But the government sure as hell wasn't complaining when they got those materials for free.

Click to expand...

What?

It was hardly "free". The cost savings of recycling scrap as opposed to acquiring raw material is pennies on the dollar. So the money means nothing, it is the savings in manpower that was previously used to procure the raw materials that was the savings. The economy was in a Total War footing, and all resources were used for the prosecution of the war. Dollars meant nothing, it was the man hours that was critical.

Which takes less time? Mining raw iron ore, smelting that down to get Iron ingots, then converting it to steel. Or simply melting down existing steel for reuse. Why, the second obviously. Remember, during that era manpower was the critical shortage. That is why we placed women on the assembly line. Why we had women trained as pilots and tank drivers to move the equipment from one place to another. Women train and bus drivers, women ship builders, because the shortage was in people. Even my grandmothers, who never worked before or after got jobs during the war because there was a giant labor shortage.

This is also what caused the huge exodus from the farm to the city. Farmers were hugely mechanized during the war, and when it ended there were far less farm jobs to return to. So guys that picked cotton and harvested wheat before the war came back and saw the job now done by tractors. So they went to the cities, used their GI Bill, and got jobs in factories (which were also increasingly mechanized).

This is also the reason why increasingly more and more work on farm done by people was done by Bracero. Starting in 1942, over 200,000 migrant workers from Mexico were brought into the US to work the fields. Known as Bracero ("one who works with his arms"), this became the replacement for men who were off fighting the war. Not because of economics, but because there were just not enough men to do the work.



Now are you going to keep trying to spin this into something it is not? It has nothing to do with money.

Oozlefinch said:

What?

It was hardly "free". The cost savings of recycling scrap as opposed to acquiring raw material is pennies on the dollar. So the money means nothing, it is the savings in manpower that was previously used to procure the raw materials that was the savings. The economy was in a Total War footing, and all resources were used for the prosecution of the war. Dollars meant nothing, it was the man hours that was critical.

Which takes less time? Mining raw iron ore, smelting that down to get Iron ingots, then converting it to steel. Or simply melting down existing steel for reuse. Why, the second obviously. Remember, during that era manpower was the critical shortage. That is why we placed women on the assembly line. Why we had women trained as pilots and tank drivers to move the equipment from one place to another. Women train and bus drivers, women ship builders, because the shortage was in people. Even my grandmothers, who never worked before or after got jobs during the war because there was a giant labor shortage.

This is also what caused the huge exodus from the farm to the city. Farmers were hugely mechanized during the war, and when it ended there were far less farm jobs to return to. So guys that picked cotton and harvested wheat before the war came back and saw the job now done by tractors. So they went to the cities, used their GI Bill, and got jobs in factories (which were also increasingly mechanized).

This is also the reason why increasingly more and more work on farm done by people was done by Bracero. Starting in 1942, over 200,000 migrant workers from Mexico were brought into the US to work the fields. Known as Bracero ("one who works with his arms"), this became the replacement for men who were off fighting the war. Not because of economics, but because there were just not enough men to do the work.

Now are you going to keep trying to spin this into something it is not? It has nothing to do with money.

Click to expand...

Like hell it don't!

apdst said:

Like hell it don't!

Click to expand...

In 1942 we could have had $10 trillion in surplus sitting in the bank, we still could not have bought rubber or silk. We also still would not have had enough men to keep the mines, oil rigs, and other required industry operating. 20% of the total workforce was in the military during WWII. That is why a staggering 37-50% of women entered the workforce during and at the end of the war (up from a mere 16% before the war started). And it dropped back to 17% after the war was over.

As I have been doing, these are real statistics and real labor figures. And if it was all about money, then the number of women would have remained at all time highs, as during that era they were typically payed less then men.

But go ahead, keep up with the "no they are not", with absolutely nothing to back it up. I am done playing that game.