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Kasz216 on 11 November 2011
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mai said:

Kasz216 said:

 The part you missed.

"Soon after the war broke out, the nationalization came.[11]"

Hence why everything else after it is listed as "Dubious discuss"

And again, the US declared war in December of 1941.

The US was out of recession before then and doing a higher clip of GDP improvement then when actually in the war.

American mobilization didn't really even have any huge effect until mid to late 1942 because they didn't have the right things in place to force private companies to go along till then.... to look at the GDP.

1941 (Not in the war 11 out of 12 months/just sellign weapons) - 19% increase

1942 (In the war but not mobilizing for it well until towards the end) - 15.24% increase

1943 (war production at it's height) -  -1.88%

1944  (Allies winning the war, military production scaled back some) -  28%

Then after a few hiccups in postwar conversion, the economy kept doing better as government spending was GREATLY scaled back.

I find it odd that so many contemporary liberals are willing to say that the defense deficit spending... yet blame the Bush defesne deficit spending for the problem we're in now and see the Bush wars as a negative to the economy.

 

Of course, i'd say that's when the economy "techninically" recovered, since living during WW2 was no picnic.  The Depression didn't end till the mid to late 1940's for the regular people.

Kaz and everyone else,

You don't see forest behind the trees. All these deficit spendings and GDP are obviously important and all, but if one wants to support the idea of WW2 as the biggest reason of US recovery from Great Depression, he should take a look at the big picture. Your opponent is missing a good argument here, i.e. a post-war world order usually referred as Bretton Woods system. I doubt you'd argue that Bretton Woods is the main consequence of the WW2 and US are the biggest beneficiaries of it after all. The rest should be clear to every moderately educated person, so I'd probably save mine and yours time by not repeating banalities unless you insist :)

How would that be a good arguement for him?

My arguement is simply that WW2 didn't get us out of the depression because of government spending.

I'm argueing that deficit government spending only acts as a masking agent of actual economic movement.

The Bretton Woods system was essentially the facilitator for massive "fairer trade" making it easier for the US to ship it's goods over the rest of the world, like war torn europe.

Which, it's been a while, but i'm pretty sure I listed as one of the main reasons we recovered.  If i remember correctly I said increased foreign demand for US goods during the war, and much freerer trade after it.  (Which again is what Bretton Woods acomplished.)