WASTEFUL AND DANGEROUS MILITARY EXPENDITURES

A SHORT HISTORY OF MILITARY SPENDING (cont.)

Being involved in a war has at times been observed as temporarily assisting a country's economy.  For it has the effect of stepping up employment and business activity, as demands for increased amounts of war materials and equipment are received and filled.  At the same time, jobs become more plentiful, as large numbers of qualified workers are called away to join the military and fight in the war itself--many of them never to return.

It has, in fact, been said that a country's economy has never achieved full employment without the stimulus of military spending.  A form of indirect evidence of this is reflected in the report that the stocks on the board at the New York Stock Exchange dropped dramatically, in 1916, following Germany's first overtures seeking peace.  And thus, based upon the same hypothesis, President Roosevelt and World War II are often jointly credited with pulling the United States out of the Great Depreswsion of 1929.

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World War II (and the years leading up to it) was not without its own somewhat corresponding monetary costs as well.  By January of 1940, Franklin Roosevelt, in anticipation of what was to come, asked Americans for $460 Million (over $7 Billion in 2011 Dollars in new taxes, and for a total allotment, via the Military Supply Act, of $1.8 Billion (almost $29 Billion in 2011 Dollars).  By January, 1941, the U.S. Congress was asked to approve an "all out anti-Axis" defense budget totaling $10.8 Billion (over $173 Billion in 2011 Dollars). 
(The Consumer Price Index for 1940 was 14.0; it was 225 for 2011.  225 divided by 14 equqls 16.07.  I thus multiplied all of the above numbers by 16.07.)

Between July, 1940, and July, 1945, the American arms industry ran at "full steam," producing 71,000 naval vessels, 100,000 aircraft, 372,000 artillery pieces, 90,000 tanks, twenty million small arms, and 41 billion rounds of ammunition.  And sure enough, as has been previously conjectured, with the coming of war, the United States enjoyed full employment.  In fact, in order to fill gaps in the labor market, women were recruited, in some cases for the first time, to assume jobs that would have ordinarily been filled by their male counterparts.

Employment statistics were similarly favorable in other parts of the world as well.  This is attributable in part to the circumstance that millions upon millions of able-bodied males were now in the armies and navies of China, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Romania, Russia, etc., etc.  These numbers would eventually swell to over fifty million, as the war continued.

President Roosevelt's 1942 budget for the United States was the largest ever:  59 Billion Dollars ($814 Billion)--of which $52 Billion (over $717 Billion) was to be consumed in the war effort.
(In this, and every following instance, I have multipolied by the appropriate figure, based upon that year's Consumer Price Index, and have added the figure in 2011 Dollars, in parentheses, following each sum.)

By 1943, this was increased to $100 Billion ($1.3 Trillion) for military spending alone.  By 1943 as well, we were producing a ship a day, and an airplane every five minutes--many of which were to be inevitably sunk, or shot from the sky.

Our 1944 war budget was close to the same figure as that of 1943:  $99.7 Billion (a few Billion short of $13 Trillion).  By that year, the U.S. was producing forty percent of the world's armaments.  There was continued full employment; business prospered, and more people were said to be better off than ever before.

Russia's factories were likewise busy producing equipment for warfare.  For example, during the first half of 1944, her factories turned out 14,000 tanks, as well as 16,000 airplanes.

And what was to be our crowning World War achievement, the development of the atomic bomb, consumed a total of Two Billion Dollars (approximately $25 Billion), spent in secret, and culminating in the most dreaded instrumentality that man has ever produced.  Bringing instantaneous death to thousands, it ended the War; leaving the United States with a total national debt of $258 Billion (over $3 Trillion)--a sixfold increase over where said debt stood in 1941.

Europe also wound up in an economic, as well as physical, shambles.  England was virtually bankrupt.  Interestingly, Russia's loss of so many millions of men caused large numbers of women to necessarily come to fill the ranks of the country's professional specialists, and many other areas of employment as well.

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Subsequent to the Second World War, new military endeavors were to further dissipate mankind's assets.  This country's 1948 peacetime budget, as submitted to Congress by President Truman, was in the amount of $18 Billion (almost $168 Billion), the major portion of this sum being earmarked for "national defense."  By 1949, we had also committed to helping our NATO allies to rearm themselves; pledging, that year, the sum of $5.8 Billion (almost $55 Billion) for that purpose alone.

Also taking place during the late nineteen-forties was the birth of Israel.  The new nation sustained great financial burden in order to develop the military forces and air power it needed for survival as a separate country in a hostile Arab world. 

In July, 1950, our President Truman, seeking to protect our nation, sought to enlarge and extend the horrors of our new age of atomic weaponry.  He requested $260 Million (almost Two and a half Billion) for the development of a more dreadful successor to our atomic bomb, to be called the "hydrogen bomb."

At about the same time, conflict arose in Korea, in which the United States perceived an obligation to participate.  Plans for such participation included an escalation, in 1950, of our number of armed forces personnel to almost a million.  During these years, the United States spent more than Fifteen Billion Dollars (close to $140 Billion) upon its efforts in the Korean conflict.  And our military pop;ulation was eventually increased to almost three million in order to facilitate our efforts therein.

The 1950s have been termed the "Cold War" years; and in fact gave birth to a new age of military spending.  During this period, billions were expended, by many nations, upon research and development--as new and better ways to wreak havoc and destruction upon each other were sought, discovered, and perfected.  By this time, high levels of military and defense spending had become permanent fixtures in our federal budget, and in those of a number of other countries as well.  For the United States and Russia, this included further development of our nuclear arsenals; and, later, the launching of space programs, wherein each participant exerted duplicate efforts, aimed at achieving the same goal:  dominance and superiority beyond the immediate bounds of our planet.

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