War does not create prosperity

[rambone]

War destroys lives, consumes wealth, and erodes liberty.

Don't be fooled when people claim that WWII ended the Great Depression. Wartime spending is just wealth distribution that feels patriotic. It is a child's sugar-high that will feel energetic for a time but lead to a crash before long.

Campaign For Liberty — War Does Not Produce Prosperity    by Sheldon Richman

 

[Son of Liberty]

WWII creating jobs and wealth because we produced steel and other raw materials here, in the US.
If we still did that now we would have more people working and way less unemployment, but when the elite company owners, and politicians work to ship our maufacturing jobs else where this is what you get,.

 

[mrjarrell]

Well, now. To be completely honest about it we must concede that war does create prosperity for those in the military/industrial complex. Contractors are making money hand over fist, at our expense (and our children's, since all the funding for their adventurism is being borrowed on their backs). Politicians get to whip up nationalistic fervor and garner more money and votes, since they're usually for said adventurism, (and even when they protest it, they're just flip sides of the same coin and they make their money, too). Some people are enriched. The rest of us....not so much.

 

[DragonGunner]

Well, now. To be completely honest about it we must concede that war does create prosperity for those in the military/industrial complex. Contractors are making money hand over fist, at our expense (and our children's, since all the funding for their adventurism is being borrowed on their backs). Politicians get to whip up nationalistic fervor and garner more money and votes, since they're usually for said adventurism, (and even when they protest it, they're just flip sides of the same coin and they make their money, too). Some people are enriched. The rest of us....not so much.

^^^THIS^^^^

 

[NordicHeathenVinlander]

Um, historically, war gives purpose, jobs and wealth; But also speeds up technology, obviously in the favor of "out gunning" the enemy.

 

[dross]

Yes, war is economically good for some. But that is true of everything, including disease, floods, fires, and famine.

War is bad for any country in the long run, in the same way as any sort of non-productive government spending is bad.

Look at WWII like a big stimulus bill that actually worked in the short run. The government borrows money it doesn't have and pours that money into the economy. Of course that will stimulate the economy and create jobs and all sorts of wonderful short-term things.

The "stimulus" bill would have worked too, in the short term, if the money had actually been spent in the economy. Much of it wasn't spent at all, and what was spent was used in ways that don't help the economy.

The problem stimulating the economy in this way, and this is true regardless of whether the stimulus works in the short term or not, is that eventually you have to pay back what's owed.

After WWII, this worked out pretty well because we were emerging on the global economy, so that covered up and hid the debt in high production. Just remember that if we hadn't had that WWII debt, we would have been that much better off.

 

[Lex Concord]

Um, historically, war gives purpose, jobs and wealth; But also speeds up technology, obviously in the favor of "out gunning" the enemy.

Positive wealth to a few, as previously alluded, but it is a net destructive force to lives, capital, and prosperity in general.

Regarding technology, have there been gains during war? Of course, but you neglect the opportunity costs of those gains. Had Oppenheimer and the others not been engaged in the Manhattan Project, might we have cheap clean fusion by now? The world will never know. Instead, we know we have the scourge of mankind, a genie bottled in 10,000 tubes in the ground waiting for its day to decimate the race. Some gain.

 

[Blackhawk2001]

Yep, it absolutely pays to do war on the cheap. Ask the Chinese. "Quantity has a quality of its own". "War never solves anything." "One life is too much to pay for war". "All government is evil." Once we've developed anti-matter energy sources and develop that universal force-field which can prevent any enemies from reaching our shores, we can disband those nasty soldiers and all live lives of luxury.

 

[rambone]

Yep, it absolutely pays to do war on the cheap. Ask the Chinese. "Quantity has a quality of its own". "War never solves anything." "One life is too much to pay for war". "All government is evil." Once we've developed anti-matter energy sources and develop that universal force-field which can prevent any enemies from reaching our shores, we can disband those nasty soldiers and all live lives of luxury.

This was supposed to be about economics, not whether military should exist or whether wars should be fought. Perpetual wars hasten our own economic demise, this is a fact.

 

[Blackhawk2001]

This was supposed to be about economics, not whether military should exist or whether wars should be fought. Perpetual wars hasten our own economic demise, this is a fact.

The assumption seems to be that the "military-industrial complex" pushes war and are the only ones to profit from it. I don't know the first thing about economic theory, so I'm probably better off without expressing an opinion, but it seems to me that - WWII specifically - although it cost a tremendous amount, put the nation back to work and caused a bunch of infrastructure and manufacturing improvements to be initiated and, therefore, put people to work doing legitimate things that didn't directly derive from government spending. Whether the cost was subsumed in the increased manufacturing and productivity of the nation, I don't know.

Obviously we can't continually spend lives, treasure, and goods in warfare, but don't discount the secondary effects and what they do for the economy. I'm speaking of things like, gps, trauma treatment techniques, avionics and electronics in general, aircraft, off-road vehicles, developments in firearms, home security systems, roads, artificial fibers like nylon, nomex, and spandex, etc.

 

[rambone]

The assumption seems to be that the "military-industrial complex" pushes war and are the only ones to profit from it. I don't know the first thing about economic theory, so I'm probably better off without expressing an opinion, but it seems to me that - WWII specifically - although it cost a tremendous amount, put the nation back to work and caused a bunch of infrastructure and manufacturing improvements to be initiated and, therefore, put people to work doing legitimate things that didn't directly derive from government spending. Whether the cost was subsumed in the increased manufacturing and productivity of the nation, I don't know.

That's pretty much what the Democrats passed in 2009, wasn't it? Put people back to work, using money borrowed from our grandchildren. I just posted this because people need to learn from history and stop praising economic failures imposed on us by devout socialists.

They call this the Keynesian economic theory: go into debt for some short-lived benefits; blame the failure on not enough Government spending.

 

[indyartisan]

Seems like some scarey ideas these Keynesians have. I am pretty sure for the price of any war this country has been in we could have bought all the property involved at fair market value.

 

[dross]

The assumption seems to be that the "military-industrial complex" pushes war and are the only ones to profit from it. I don't know the first thing about economic theory, so I'm probably better off without expressing an opinion, but it seems to me that - WWII specifically - although it cost a tremendous amount, put the nation back to work and caused a bunch of infrastructure and manufacturing improvements to be initiated and, therefore, put people to work doing legitimate things that didn't directly derive from government spending. Whether the cost was subsumed in the increased manufacturing and productivity of the nation, I don't know.

Obviously we can't continually spend lives, treasure, and goods in warfare, but don't discount the secondary effects and what they do for the economy. I'm speaking of things like, gps, trauma treatment techniques, avionics and electronics in general, aircraft, off-road vehicles, developments in firearms, home security systems, roads, artificial fibers like nylon, nomex, and spandex, etc.

Read my post above. You are venturing into the world of economics and the fallacy that sounds so attractive to you is called the broken window fallacy. Don't feel bad, even prominent economists fall prey to this fallacy.

One of the latest examples I heard was a commentator after Katrina, saying that actually Katrina would prove good for the economy because of all the construction and infrastructure work it would create, causing an economic boom. I could refute this in detail, but you're a smart guy, so I'll take a short cut:

If a disaster like Katrina (or a war) were good for the economy, then wouldn't ten of them be great for the economy, and one hundred would be fantastic, right? You see the point.

The point is that like the baker's broken window being good for the glassmaker, to reference the fallacy's name, it ain't so good for the baker or the baker's customers. It's just that we see the good that came to the glassmaker, and we see the baker's window restored. What we don't see is the that the tailor would have benefited from from the new suit the baker would have bought, if he wouldn't have had to replace the perfectly good window he already had.

You've been led to water. The rest is up to you.

 

[turnandshoot4]

The point is that like the baker's broken window being good for the glassmaker, to reference the fallacy's name, it ain't so good for the baker or the baker's customers. It's just that we see the good that came to the glassmaker, and we see the baker's window restored. What we don't see is the that the tailor would have benefited from from the new suit the baker would have bought, if he wouldn't have had to replace the perfectly good window he already had.

You've been led to water. The rest is up to you.

Excellent!!!

 

[88GT]

That's pretty much what the Democrats passed in 2009, wasn't it? Put people back to work, using money borrowed from our grandchildren. I just posted this because people need to learn from history and stop praising economic failures imposed on us by devout socialists.

They call this the Keynesian economic theory: go into debt for some short-lived benefits; blame the failure on not enough Government spending.

That only holds true if you believe that U.S. involvement in WW2 was initiated solely for the purpose of ramping up the economy.

Read my post above. You are venturing into the world of economics and the fallacy that sounds so attractive to you is called the broken window fallacy. Don't feel bad, even prominent economists fall prey to this fallacy.

One of the latest examples I heard was a commentator after Katrina, saying that actually Katrina would prove good for the economy because of all the construction and infrastructure work it would create, causing an economic boom. I could refute this in detail, but you're a smart guy, so I'll take a short cut:

If a disaster like Katrina (or a war) were good for the economy, then wouldn't ten of them be great for the economy, and one hundred would be fantastic, right? You see the point.

The point is that like the baker's broken window being good for the glassmaker, to reference the fallacy's name, it ain't so good for the baker or the baker's customers. It's just that we see the good that came to the glassmaker, and we see the baker's window restored. What we don't see is the that the tailor would have benefited from from the new suit the baker would have bought, if he wouldn't have had to replace the perfectly good window he already had.

You've been led to water. The rest is up to you.

Only valid under a certain set of assumptions.

Would the baker have actually spent the money on the new suit? Your example only works if he was in a spending mood. Even if you assume he was, there isn't much difference since the net effect is still an infusion of the baker's money into the market. Whether the baker pays the tailor for a new suit or the glass maker for the new window pane, it's still all the same. And there's no more reason to believe he'd buy a new suit any more frequently than he'd buy a new window. And there again, even if he did, would he always use that disposable income for a new suit or would he spend it elsewhere? It doesn't really matter if he's spending it, does it?

And perhaps more importantly, where was the economy in terms of productivity prior to the initiation of war? A healthy, thriving economy would surely be hurt since resources would be drained from the private sector at alarming rates to provide for the prosecution of the war. The degree of harm being directly correlated to the length of the war.

But a stalled, stagnant economy may very well benefit the population. War creates a demand for goods and services. Demand creates a need for manufacturing. Manufacturing creates a need for working individuals. In an economy where the reality is that nobody works so nobody has money so nobody buys anything so nobody demands anything so nobody creates anything so nobody works, war might just be the impetus to break the country out of the self-feeding death spiral. (Yes, other things could do it, but in our world today, with the litany of regulations and restrictions, war is, sadly, the easiest and most expedient solution.)

That said, there is no denying that this is a temporary effect. One should really consider it the kick-in-the-pants to get things moving and not the actual force behind the movement. The spark, but not the fuel, if you will. And a protracted war will undoubtedly counter any of the gains made in the long term.

I'll stand by the premise that a spark to the engine is still a benefit if the engine wasn't running at all.

 

[rambone]

If war were good for the economy, then 10 years of war should have left our economy booming.

War is an excuse to redistribute taxpayers' wealth to the contractors of their choice.

 

[Booya]

Yes, war is economically good for some. But that is true of everything, including disease, floods, fires, and famine.

War is bad for any country in the long run, in the same way as any sort of non-productive government spending is bad.

Look at WWII like a big stimulus bill that actually worked in the short run. The government borrows money it doesn't have and pours that money into the economy. Of course that will stimulate the economy and create jobs and all sorts of wonderful short-term things.

The "stimulus" bill would have worked too, in the short term, if the money had actually been spent in the economy. Much of it wasn't spent at all, and what was spent was used in ways that don't help the economy.

The problem stimulating the economy in this way, and this is true regardless of whether the stimulus works in the short term or not, is that eventually you have to pay back what's owed.

After WWII, this worked out pretty well because we were emerging on the global economy, so that covered up and hid the debt in high production. Just remember that if we hadn't had that WWII debt, we would have been that much better off.

^^^BINGO^^^

 

[E5RANGER375]

Well, now. To be completely honest about it we must concede that war does create prosperity for those in the military/industrial complex. Contractors are making money hand over fist, at our expense (and our children's, since all the funding for their adventurism is being borrowed on their backs). Politicians get to whip up nationalistic fervor and garner more money and votes, since they're usually for said adventurism, (and even when they protest it, they're just flip sides of the same coin and they make their money, too). Some people are enriched. The rest of us....not so much.

maybe not all contractors believe that way.

 

[abnk]

War does not create prosperity

How is this news?

 

[rambone]

That only holds true if you believe that U.S. involvement in WW2 was initiated solely for the purpose of ramping up the economy.

If you believe that FDR pulled America out of the Great Depression, then Obama should be praised for following in FDR's footsteps. Stimulus is stimulus.

Would the baker have actually spent the money on the new suit? Your example only works if he was in a spending mood. Even if you assume he was, there isn't much difference since the net effect is still an infusion of the baker's money into the market. Whether the baker pays the tailor for a new suit or the glass maker for the new window pane, it's still all the same. And there's no more reason to believe he'd buy a new suit any more frequently than he'd buy a new window. And there again, even if he did, would he always use that disposable income for a new suit or would he spend it elsewhere? It doesn't really matter if he's spending it, does it?

Maybe the baker used the money to grow his business and hire more employees, instead of shrinking his company and scaring away customers. The broken window is merely a wealth transfer. If broken windows are good economic stimulus, then vandalizing the whole town should be great for the economy.


An economy only grows if it manages to sell goods or services outside its borders. Imagine a family of 2 parents and 10 kids. The parents represent the government, the kids are the citizens. If the family is in dire straights financially, can it pull out of debt by giving the kids chores to do and increasing their allowance? No. The only thing the family can do to gain wealth is to sell goods or services outside the home.

The same applies to a village, a state, or a nation. If the government wants to get out of debt and grow the economy, it needs to do something besides spend its savings account and give us chores to do in the form of government jobs. We need to produce something and sell somewhere else for the American economy to grow.