Wow. One data point and you’re jumping for joy
the Last time I checked, wars only destroy
There was no multiplier, consumption just shrank
As we used scarce resources for every new tank
Pretty perverse to call that prosperity
Rationed meat, Rationed butter… a life of austerity
When that war spending ended your friends cried disaster
yet the economy thrived and grew faster
I'm one of those loons who sees spending on war as a cost, not a benefit - that is, I'm someone who believes that taking scarce resources out of the economy and sending them overseas only to blow them to smithereens cannot in any way, shape, or form be productive. Such destruction may, in some instances, be necessary in the name of self-defense (a separate question), but it ain't productive.
For some reason, though, not a few folks believe that the American government's spending on World War II was the kick in the economic pants that snapped the nation of its Great Depression.
Simultaneously, however, not a few of those same folks believe that the last ten years of wartime spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been a drag on the U.S. economy. All of which prompts Don Boudreaux to rightly ask:
If – as pop fiction and the opinions of many experts contend – the American economy was rescued from the Great Depression by World War II, why do a number of people today place part of the blame for America’s current fiscal woes on Uncle Sam’s unnecessary military adventures abroad?
