1946: The Greatest Depression in US History (prior to 2020) 

Yes, WW2 didn't get America out of the Depression

19:37 You and higgs are a bit wrong here. There are a lot of civilians that TOTALLY want grenades. just a few laws in the way, that's all.

i'd like to argue politicians are also, in fact, unemployed. they contribute nothing to society.

tl;dr war is bad for the economy, don't have one

and this also explains why the Soviet economy was so shitty. If all you build is weapons, it doesn't help your economy.

“Poverty babies” is the best term I’ve all day

Can this be used to actually explain why Soviet Union collapsed at end of day? Strong military industry and extreme military spending did not helped Soviet Union rebuild after WW2 and possible prolonged it?

This is EXACTLY TRUE! The world was closed due to a medical scare. Economic collapse was immediate in the United States. We truly have no clue what ANYTHING is WORTH!

U keep giving me great shit to unwind. As a nurse who has to deal with the current health issue, i thank you.

If the US economy boomed during WW2, why was everything rationed during WW2?

I find this uplifting. I thought for sure someone somewhere would pitch another world war to get the economy going again in 2020 but hopefully, all economists and policymakers will see this video and just institute emergency Christmas instead.

God TIK, stick to economics.

It's almost as if a wartime command economy works a little bit differently from a peacetime free-market economy, and the statistical measures for one can't be meaningfully compared with the statistical measures for the other.

As much as I admire Hoover and FDR trying to help, they just skewed everything up, and made the Great Depression last longer than it should have.

GDP is very misleading number. It contains all spending in economy including debts and money throwed avay. Simply said, if government spend billions on digging holes and filling them again, the GDP will rose. But the real wealth not. War is similar nonsense. The graphs at the beginning of the video are right. And the most important graph is consumption rate, steadily rising during this so called 1946 depression. The fifties WAS period of real economic improvement for US society, only moneney must not be thrown out for thousands of bombers. GDP can be compared only in the similar times, comparing war an peace GDP is nonsense.

My father was fortunate in 1946 as a USA citizen. He had just demobilized and left service with the USAAF in 1945 as a former B-17 Pilot/Aircraft Commander in the 15th Air Force and after his combat service a 4 engine instructor. He had civilian employment with the Motion Picture and Theatrical Stage Union as a Motion Picture Machine Operator (also knows as a Projectionist) before he volunteered for service in 1942 . So he got his civilian union job back

How is any of this surprising? We built +27,000 liberty ships, +640,000 jeeps, +295,000 aircraft between 1941-45. Then the war ended, and we just stopped doing that (at least on this scale).

Controversial as usual. But god damn do you do solid work tik. love it!

i'm actually glad you are talking about this. Couple months back i was watching the movie Flags of our Fathers, and their was a scene where a war bonds salesman is talking to the marines that raised the flag on Iwo Jima, that the US is broke. Stating that the treasure is empty, cant buy oil from the Arab nations, and bond sales are becoming useless. It always was picking at the back of my head on the State of US economy in 1945-46.

Hey TIK can you do a video on the recent economic crisis and the effects of it? May be a bit outside of your usual stuff (just a bit) but it would be interesting to see what you think of it and what people should do in response (since I don't trust the government to provide proper help).

After studying this historical episode, we conclude the following: (1) Conventional wisdom is correct on one thing: there was no depression in 1946, or anything resembling one. (2) Accordingly, aggregate economic statistics need to be viewed with a skeptical eye, particularly in periods such as this, when there are pronounced governmental interventions in markets. (3) The failure of the nation to enter a depression after 1944, however, reflected not pent-up consumer demand so much as the dramatically ameliorative effects of changing relative prices on the macroeconomy. (4) The smooth transition to peace was accomplished despite the existence of a fiscal policy that was the very antithesis of Keynesian economic prescriptions to deal with falling aggregate demand. The most dramatically contractionary fiscal policy in modern American history, failed to materially alter the pace of economic activity. (5) Keynesian economics triumphed in politics and among aca demic economists at the very time that empirical evidence was clearly exposing its explanatory weaknesses. The very empiricist his is not to deny, however, that there was a fair amount of economic discontent in the period. Because of continuing price controls into 1946, there were shortages of many consumer goods; labor strife ran high, with days missed because of work stoppages reaching a new peak. (6) A market-Austrian interpretation of this historical episode is very much more in keeping with the evidence. www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiS2OSDyZb0AhVClGoFHZvDDy8QFnoECAMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.mises.org%2Frae5_2_1_2.pdf%3Ftoken%3Ds0L9_TOt&usg=AOvVaw3EO55LAElOVwhXQ6s_qhyj

"The economy didn't catch up to its 1945 levels before 1964": Literally shows a graph that seems to contradict that the second after. Is this a mistake?

Theoretically, nuclear subs could be used to produce electricty.

I love your premise that you continuously promote in your work, “Does the data match what’s generally being reported?”. Great work! Keep it up! Despite your revisionist conclusions and after watching no more than 10 hours of your content, I have not been able to detect any bias in your work except the one I’ve already stated, “Does the data match what’s generally being reported?”.

I don't know whether TIK actually believes what he puts out. It feels like he forgets that economists always factor in "guns vs butter" when talking about statistics. The issue is that GNP/GDP figures are indiscriminate and don't always reflect real living standards and terminology like "recession and depression" doesn't actually mean anything for people. When there is a war on though, the government actively intervenes in the market place to produce weapons of war so yes, the historian is "right" to toss out the years of WW2 when discussing real growth. The truth is that WW2 did immediately consume the excess unemployed and put them to work. It is undeniable. Whether the work they did was profitable for the civilian economy or not is irrelevant to the core concept of the "Wartime Boom". The "Wartime Boom" refers to shaking off the decade long malaise which saw a significant portion of the populace in their prime production years spent in economic inactivity - regardless of whether the inactivity was for the civilian market or not. The work programs of the FDR's "New Deal" and the "Wartime Boom" were not economically beneficial, it's true. But it started to get people out of the mindset that it is "ok" to sit at home and do nothing or that long term high unemployment rates were "normal" and to be tolerated. The simple act of giving people money to dig a ditch that is economically useless or to build a tank that has value beyond the 0 dollars of useful economic output produced. It was designed to instill a psychological sense of self-worth and a habit of waking up every day to a job in order to earn money to sustain yourself. Economics is as much about human behavior as it is about how much money is being spent. It is the heart of Keynesian economics that you constantly ridicule that created this effect. The only problem with Keynesian economics is that it advocates for SHORT TERM injections in the economy but the measures put in ALWAYS end up being long term or PERMANENT distortions of the marketplace by the government because of the lack of political will to withdraw subsidies or handouts. Transitioning out of the wartime economy into a large rise in the civilian economy is PROOF that Keynesian economics works when you are willing to withdraw the stimulus after the crisis is over and done with. Of course, it was easy back in 1945-46. It is easy to close down factories making tanks, planes, and bullets and telling workers that they must now find jobs in the civilian economy on their own when there is no war to fight. It is MUCH HARDER to wean people off of cheap credit, welfare handouts, and other "free" subsidies in peacetime once they have gotten used to receiving such benefits. It is the same old "ratcheting effect" we see in all types of economic behavior. That lack of political will, however is not indicative of whether government intervention in the market place is or is not folly.

TIK, well said and researched...please DONT stick to Tanks...

>Prior to 2020 *Uh oh*

Fun fact: before 1946, there was no such thing as a recession. They were all just called depressions. But after the war, they worried that the people would get hysterical if they heard that the Depression was back, so they renamed it a “recession,” that is, still an economic downturn, but not so serious as a depression.

Who would have thought the free market system isn't robust enough to handle war or disaster, and continues to fail when governments try and reboot it.

For the first 7 minutes I prepared for a full blown attack, I couldn't believe my own ears. But knowing you I saw the full show, so you get thumbs up again. You really woke me up there. 😴😵🤔🤗👍

Would a security guard be similar to a soldier? Standing outside a vault, producing nothing, no one attempts to rob it, and he still gets paid. But we wouldn't say security guards are a drain on the economy; they're insurance to protect wealth from being destroyed through theft. Extrapolate this to an army. If one thief comes, you need one guard. A team of thieves, a team of guards. 100,000 thieves with helmets, badges, grenades, & tanks, 100,000 guards, similarly equipped. You COULD choose to not build a similar force to resist them if you don't want to take the hit to living-standards due to non consumer-valuable production, but failing to resist the thieves results in a much deeper plunge for the victims. We could speculate, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if there simply weren't any thieves and everyone got along to produce wealth freely?", but pragmatically, we know that's not going to happen any time soon, so large numbers of guards (soldiers) to protect what wealth we have it is.

I think there is one argument to address. No, sherman tanks are not an "economic benefit", like jewelry they have no practical use for civilians. But those working in those fields have needs. So if the government borrows money to build tanks the people building those tanks now have currency to buy things. Meaning there is a demand for things when otherwise none would exist. This means that someone unless acted against by the government such as with rationing will build a productive enterprise to meet that demand. It really makes sense. The tailor was out of work during the years that everyone had so little work that they were solely concerned about food. But now that they got regular well paying work in the tank factory they are finally able to replace their old ratty clothes. And the borrowing is key. It's not true that the government is solely using resources that already exist. It is also creating a demand for resources which if the price is fair will naturally result in someone finding a way to produce them. It's like if I borrow money to order a new suit, the money is invented on the spot when I borrow it. I then use that money to create a demand for output that doesnt exist yet, and as a result the output occurs.

Hey Tik. I’ll catch this later. Been saving up your videos to binge. Been getting back into the American Civil War. Hope you are holding your own in the U.K. I’m currently plowing through Anne Applebaum’s, “Red Famine.” Jesus, if you want to see famine at its worst, Ukraine ranked pretty high in the 1930s. Society will survive this pandemic. WWI and the influenza outbreak didn’t destroy civilization. It’ll be tough for next few months, but I have confidence we will endure. Cheers for all your hard work. I can still support you on Patreon, so best of luck!

The way this video started out I thought you were crazy. Glad to see you were just making a point. My father lived thru the depression and WWII and he can tell you the war years were no party on the home front, and the post war years were far better than the depression years.

You owe us a video talking about how Iwo Jima is the most strategic position of WW2 for April Fools

This makes me think of the current situation in Russia, and the press regurgitating Russian propaganda of their increases in GDP during their war with Ukraine, and I think it's a lot worse there as they're heavily sanctioned and the prices are more and more regulated and private companies get nationalized by the hundreds.

There was a spate of labor strife in the 1946-65 period. Major economic sectors in basic industry suffered from post war shortages due to strikes. In particular, the steel, mining and automotive industries were hit hard by prolonged strikes. This led to passage of the Taft-Hartley labor act, empowering the president to force striking workers to go back to work as mandatory arbitration was supposed to settle the strike in question. President Truman vetoed this bill, but it was voted into effect by congress. Curiously, Truman used Taft-Hartley law to send Railroad employees back to work twice.

Brilliant analysis. Thank you.

Companies are the same 90% of workers do nothing but still counted as empoyed workers.

Hey Tik what you are saying is absolutely correct in that Government spending cannot get the economy out of a recession and that during the war years there was still a depression. However could it not be argued that America was one of the last major manufacturing powers in the world that had kept its factories and manpower intact compared to the rest of the developed countries and that you could point to the fact that there was less competition for American business after the war due to the rest of the world having to rebuild and because of this WW2 helped America to get out of the depression. This is typically what I have been taught as the reason for Americas recovery after the depression. Is this accurate or is there a flaw in this argument as well? Big fan by the way keep up the great videos.

So everyone working for the public sector is technically unemployed? Despite a teacher's students becoming more educated and contributing to the future economy? Despite a medical professional ensuring people get better and back into work? A soilder protecting his homeland or that of an ally to ensure future economic benefit and stability? Logically I'm afraid this train of thought does not carry. They are all adding value to the economy. The economy is a whole held up by those directly creating wealth and those in supporting roles. Without considering the economic effects of deciding not to mobilising troops it's difficult to gauge cost/benefit to the US long term whatever the instant effects to GDP

The notion that government contributes no economic value is nonsense. People would not form governments if their existence was always a net loss. The organizing capability of government is or can be economically valuable, depending on the its relative size and application. Also, there is no such thing as persistent free market/economy. Free market/economy is a BS concept. A better word would be open market/economy.

I grew up during that period,life was actually good. GDP was so high during the war was due to the U.S. producing so much . We supplied not only the U.S. military effort but also Russia. We went to the movies every week, I went to a private school there were no big homeless problems like today. We ate well,always had clothes we needed, new suits for Easter, sneakers every summer. No drug problems.

You've made me, a soldier, feel useless now. Was it really that necessary TIK? :(

This may be one the most important youtube channels today. This a great course on economics and history.

Markus Krall has basically said what you did about the current crisis. He said it'd happen 2020. He is really prominent in Germany, published a couple books on 2008 and ECB interest policy. In the 90s he coded banks' risk assessment tools. Most importantly he's good rhetorically. Check him out!

TIK, when looking at the chart I'd suggest you look at one element: if you trace the blue line in 0:48, downwards from say 1950 to 1937, you see it forms a continuum with the upward trend and inclination. What you have there can be seen both as a huge post-war recession, and as a huge spike upwards due to war effort that subsequently falls back to the pre-war trends. Think of it like you're on emergency mode doing extra hours, and when the emergency ends you go back to normal. In fact a lot of economic cycles are like that; you see a bubble when prices go up more than the trend, and it tends to correct harshly.

*P R I O R T O 2 0 2 0* that is a confident prediction that i cant say i disagree with

There was a dark joke among US servicemen during the war: "Golden Gate in '48, Bread line '49"

Economic investigator Frank G Melbourne Australia is following this informative content cheers Frank 😊

Omg TIK Stick to tanks! What I mean by that is don't ever post anything that I disagree with (even slightly), even though I'm not a patron of your channel. Also, if you could do a video on why the Wehrmacht did nothing wrong that would be good. Maybe you could talk about that time they helped the US fight the SS? I like that one because I already agree with it! In fact, don't even do history anymore. What I want to see is for you to scroll through Reddit until you find something about WW2, and just copy and paste that. No need to fact check, Reddit probably fact checks! In short, if you could please produce the following videos: - Why America saved Europe - Why the UK was a tiny little island, who Hitler respected, but won the war without help - Why were the Germans (not nazis, that's a bad word) SO damn good at fighting? - Why the Russians were only able to defeat Hitler by overrunning his defences like a swarm of evil commie rats - Why the Japanese were the REAL bad guy of ww2 - Hitler is alive, he lives on the moon ---- Obviously I'm joking - keep up the good, interesting, political, economic work!

Great video man. Bravo

ARecesion is when your neighbour loses their job a depression is when you lose yours.

I don`t agree with TIK The main contribution of the war economy was that millions of poeple got job specific education. Another contribution was the construction of plenty of infrastructure. A lot of unnecesary regulation was removed. New production methods were implemented. Productivity increased. Ex. Germany got ribbed of a lot of its territory, got looted at the end of the war, lost millions of homes and factories due to bombing. But the economy was stronger 15 years later. -During wartime there was a lot of experience exchange between competing companies, there was plenty of standardization, engineers increased their social standing. - A lot of infrastructure, airfields, chemical plants were built. Today after a war the biggest gain could be achieved if this tons of regulation would become slashed.

I've got Rothbard's book in a box, waiting for me to unwrap it... you've convinced me to start that next. Great video!

Thank you TIK for making these videos, aside from the mises institute and all of the associated thinkers, you are my only source for austro-Libertarian philosophy and economics.

You keep focusing on the consumer in this argument. The consumer had actually very little to spend on during the war. What does "boom" is industry. Companies involved in the war effort see huge growth, re-opening closed factories, building new ones. That is where the "boom" was.

Excellent. This is really interesting. I had always assumed that the traditional take that the war ended the depression. However, thw way that you have explained this actually makes a lot more sense to me. I would genuinely be interested in more videos on this subject.

You could calculate the cost of a sherman tank, R&D, man hours of pay and materials to make one. However that isn't the price of the tank. Its the cost of production.

Military production being a "drain" on an economy is very debatable.

Well.... Thank you TiK. I am 60, and love history. And I NEVER heard about this economic disaster. We need more critical thinking today.

This is such a good video, I am shocked why this doesn't have more views!! great work!

Consumption that determines the Standard of Living, didn't recover until the end of the war

A lot of the economic slump is misleading. About 10% of the US workforce participated in the GI Bill, and got either a 2 or 4 year education. Once the GI bill participants graduated, the GDP vastly accelerated. These were not wasted years, more a retraining of 10% of US workforce.

Economists make stuff up and tell you it's complicated. Always have. Politicians, as we all know, make stuff up. The 1929 crash and ensuing years were about 9,000 bank failures and the elimination of $7T in cash assets and another mountain of value from stocks and real estate Money supply contraction. By 1939/40, things were perking up again (Dow and car production), but it really hadn't bottomed from 1929. The war economy employed folks to a high degree and their wages are something. Factories, shipyards were built with government guaranteed financing. 70 artificial rubber plants were built by the government and given to the rubber manufacturers. I guess that's the same as a free loan....right? In 1945-46 the "strike wave" hit as every worker had foregone raises during the war years. Yes, during the war my parents like everyone else were subject to rationing and had not recovered from the greatest asset wipe out in history 1929 until whatever. The war was not an economic miracle unless you were an industrialist. You got your price for the bullet and your union could not strike and there were loans of all types to assure any and all industrial expansion. On the other side, in the US, modern production techniques reduced the cost of tanks and planes significantly. These cost reductions really just meant the feds didn't need to print as much. Armaments employed everybody in sight. The consumer economy, however, was curtailed as you could only eat a little bit of butter and couldn't wear nylons. This, yes Tik it really did happen, it was not made up, drove up the savings rate in the US. You couldn't buy a tire for your car that you could only get a little gas for, but Lockheed paid you the going rate to build bombers. Kind of an enforced saving thing. My Mom would laugh about it. Both my parents worked for the federal government and you really couldn't buy a watch cuz the boys needed that metal and you couldn't buy all sorts of stuff because if you did....Hitler was gonna win!

Great work!

I could argue that conversion from military to civilian production or vice versa was not much of a problem back then. Even now you can repurpose a factory manufacturing shell casing to produce metal canisters, a factory producing mortars to high pressure tubes, hydraulics for submarines can surely be repurposed for civilian machinery, you can exchange explosives with fertilizer production and steel , steel mills, shipyard and aviation production is even more flexible. You can even do it in shifts as Chinese do as we speak.

I think a lot of historians has covered this. Many US workers and farmers got hit hard after the war. Many returned soldiers did not find work. These issues were after all up front in the 1948 presidential campaign. But compared to the situation in Europe, USA overall was in good shape in the late 40ies and did fairly well. So I don't think this is realy a big controversy.

Outstanding Content - thank you very much!

Well done! I thoroughly enjoyed this !

As a libertarian Capitalist, i wish conservatives understood that the Army is part of the state just as much as the FDA, soldiers are government employees just as much as EPA bureaucrats are And that building military bases all over the world Is Not a "small government," policy.

What I take from this and the last video on depressions is that if we re-open everything now and pretend it's "business as usual" like many politicians want we'll be just sacrificing lives for nothing, the depression is already here, it's inevitable and it will be worsen by things that are out of our control like bailouts and money printing. Am I correct in my assumption our should I stick to tanks?

The recession is kind of glossed over because its basically the US switching from war to peace. All those factories making tanks, suddenly stopped, then had to retool for making cars, retrain, because half the prewar employees were dead, and war employees were women going back to the home, and large numbers of men switching job from soldier to worker. it may only take 3 months, but if the entire country is doing it at the same time, it creates a massive drop in GDP. It also explains the low unemployment, demob wasn't instantanious, people that were training weren't unemployed, but they weren't productive either.

Saw this video much later than when you featured it on your channel. I really wanted to chime in. While numbers don't lie, I think there are a few things to keep in mind: 1. The USA and its Allies had just won the war and the people were generally elated. The mood of the public was mostly positive. 2. There was hope. Fear had been replaced by faith in America's ability to do almost anything. 3. Advancements in technologies were now unleashed on the post war economy. The consumers were hungry for cars, washing machines and new homes to name a few things.

So nice to see people surprised by a 5% unemployment rate, in Spain more than 20% is seen as normal...

" A wartime BOOM" - I love it lol.

The issue with your theory is that GDP is not a complete measure of the prosperity of a nation and its population. As pointed out in your previous video regarding Soviet Union GDP, per capita GDP can be relatively high despite the population living in poverty, due to the resources of the nation being dedicated to military production/consumption instead of the production/consumption of consumer goods. In this case, the opposite was true. Most of the drop in US GDP in 1946 was due to a windback of military consumption, not a fall in consumption of consumer goods. This coupled with the fact that unemployment stayed relatively low, meant the living standards for the average US citizen did not fall with the contraction in GDP. In fact, given the euphoria due to the end of the war, US citizens would have rightly regarded it as a pretty good time to be alive.

Another Great Video!

Ok, But where would you draw the line on military power being useless, vs military power being necessary to deter forces that would cause upheaval that would in turn cause serious damage to economy?

And all this happened because the Serbs shot an archduke

Its not a recession, because consumer spending did not suffer at all. GDP dropped due to less government spending on military, remember a tank (if not sold) has no use in the economy.

I absolutely sucked at economics in school, but you actually made me interested. And I was just here on RU-vid looking for tank videos......damn you TIK!

This chanel is getting better and better!

The reason why this contraction garners little attention from economists is that the massive increase in arms production is regarded as more of an anomaly than the return to a peace time economy. In the charts that you are showing us you can see the overall trajectory of the us economy from 1932 onwards was positive. The end of the war was the beginning of an era of unprecedented affluence in US society, really only seriously challenged by the GFC 2008. Tik stick to history you’re just embarrassing yourself.

Fantastic information, love it!

The key is standard of living. If your GDP is mostly war goods, the civilian SOL is low. GDP can go DOWN and in fact people can still be happier if there is more consumer goods to go around. It's not only how much but WHAT that GDP is.

Yeah this really changed my outlook. And I always did find it suspicious if the economy was better than ever during the war, why did the US government have to domestically ration food for civilians.

AS A STUDENT OF ECONOMICS THANK GOD THAT MEN WERE RELEASED FROM MILITARY SERVICE AND GOVTS STOPPED SPENDING ON WEAPONS😊

I remember reading Lenin saying they found not build an economy building military equipment in the 20s. Ironic.

Great work TIK. Well done.

Honestly this channel is single handily providing insight to how much of the information I have been told is fabricated or straight up lies. Much of it I took for granted as true growing up but I ended up here because of the complete vagueness of how the term fascist is used with little consistency in application. THis has gotten me actually reading books which is something I basically never have done freely of my own will and only being half way through the second book and taking the word that the sentence style and ideas listed in it are consistent with Mein Kampf I can confidently say that basically all references Hitler makes to the individuals ability is mainly of value of how well they can contribute to the betterment of their race/culture.

This might illustrate why the U.S. launched the Marshall Plan in 1947.

What about the industrial complex, if you build war equipment and export it. Will that add to the economy? I guess so?

I am depressed enough right now. Please something positive and nice,

I was starting to think this is a April Fools day video that accidentally uploaded 1 day earlier. Well, nice opening.

Can you pls make a deeper video about the 2020 recession and the impact of the Coronavirus on the economy? It would be great. Governments are doing Keynesian politics all together on a global scale. Something never seen before. I think the impacts will be horryfing.

FDR was one of the worst things that ever happened to the United States.

Fun fact. W.A Harriman E. Abel in the book "Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941- 1946" wrote that Stalin and Molotov asked USA for the big loan after ending the war. They belived that whole Western World will face great economic crysis after war is over. That loan woud in fact do USA an favor.

Well, I think you do a great job here (more on that later) and especially in your other RU-vid TIK series of battle analysis of Stalingrad and Crusader/N. Africa. I am a recently recruited fan of yours especially since it seems you have read and use many of the same sources I have. I believe most of your analyses of the battles you've done are "spot on" because of this! However, with regards to this particular TIK session on the US economy, as Mark Twain once said (he attributes it to the Brit PM Disraeli but apparently this has been refuted) , "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics." Reliance on estimated GDP statistics as a your main indicator of a recession/depression in the US during the WWII and in 1946 (or boom during WWII and recession in 1946 or visa versa) over simplifies things ---yes even those estimated by the US gov't. For people who were out of work during the "Great Depression," or even into the late 1930s, WWII was a boom and although there were some shortages and rationing during the war, people (not serving in the Army/Navy) were much better off both during the war and immediately after the war. The conditions in the USA was NOT any where near what they were in England during the war --for many reasons. My parents were prime (albeit antidotal) examples of this and enjoyed a fairly high (middle class) quality of life. Granted you argue that those serving in the Army/Navy are not "producers" (my father served in the Army and yes was in Britain during the war but ended the war in the Pacific) and thus represent a drain on the economy, but if they were "producers" and not soldiers, we could have lost the war and then where would the economy be? Remember that we were attacked in the Pacific and had war declared on us by Hitler so we (or really our economy) had little choice if we were to prevail. So I guess I tend to side with the economist you cited that "adjusted" his statistics for the war years--and you didn't like because he didn't "stand by" his statistics. Nevertheless, I enjoy all your TIK sessions (full disclosure-- I'm a historian also) because of the way you marshal you evidence and your arguements.

I am going to have to think about what you said. Being an old "Canada Social Credit Party" I do know economics. Long ago I had a consumer goods production factory. Today I am a landlord and produce nothing. ** I do buy my cigarettes from a native reservation at $19.00 per carton vs 120.00 . So we know the black market is thriving. My workers are paid cash as well. ** As I said, something to think about.