To: waverider who wrote (2908 ) 11/4/2001 10:44:48 AM From: WTSherman Respond to Wave, the Bauder article makes some superficial sense, but, really doesn't hold much water when you think about it. His comparison with WWII was particularly silly:Anyone old enough to remember World War II -- when consumption was rationed, people bought low-yielding victory bonds and tended victory gardens -- is told to shut up. What was patriotic then is unpatriotic now. Even though we are in a military war once again, the patriotic thing to do is to go out and load up on consumer goods, paying with a credit card.< lack of capacity of the manufacturing economy and the deficits faced by the Federal gov't. It was understood from early on that WWII was going to require huge quantities of military goods and the raw materials to make them and that the gov't needed to have some way to finance all this production. This meant that industrial production had to be shifted from non-military goods(consumer goods) to military and military related goods. Hence, the need to dampen consumer demand and spending. There was little or no concern that employment would decline as a result of this. It was clearly understood that employment would increase dramatically, the biggest danger was that there would not be enough workers given the demands for military manpower. At the same time, for both psychological and financial reasons raising new debt was necessary to finance the whole thing, so lots of different schemes to borrow were launched.
