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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (482359)	5/21/2009 12:24:35 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573954

But from 1943 to 1945 we outspent any other country in the world, probably any other two countries, maybe any other three combined. Then, as now, we had the largest GDP/GNP in the world, and in 1944 we spent well over a third of it on the military. We stopped designing and building new cars, we rationed all sorts of goods, all of this production was shifted in to the military. truthandpolitics.org US military spending was 1.7% of GDP in 1940. It went up as high as 37.8% during the war. After the war, it dropped back dowm to 3.5% of GDP by 1948. Then it started its slow march up, peaking in double digits during the 1950s. Ever so slowly, its dropped back down to 3.7% in 2003. All that time the GDP has grown dramatically, meaning that military expenditures have grown exponentially. That means in 2003 military spending is 50% of US discretionary spending. WAY TOO MUCH! And it supports my original premise: Message 25656138

To: TimF who wrote (482359)	5/21/2009 12:31:10 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573954

However, out of the war emerge some defense industries.......companies like Lockheed, Boeing, General Dynamics etc. Defense contractors where very large during WWII. Boeing probably produced more military aircraft during WWII than in the entire period since, certain than in any similar sized period after WWII. Almost 13,000 B-17s where produced. Compare to 744 B-52s, and about 2000 B-47s (and far fewer of later bombers, although they didn't come from Boeing, 100 B-1Bs and 21 B-2s), 816 KC-97s, 803 KC-135s, 68 E-3s. (I didn't count the about 4K B-29s since they where produced both during and after the war but most of them where built during the war). Give me a break. Like most defense contractors, Boeing's employment dropped significantly after WW II. It did not begin to grow again until it got into commercial aircraft in a big way.