Skip to content

Good point here

There are plenty people out there (I\’ve just seen a documentary on Channel 4 presented by one) who don\’t believe in Keynesian economics, but who think that the Great Depression was ended by the Second World War. In other words, paying men to dig holes and fill them in again is a ridiculous policy, compared to the sensible and effective course of action of paying men to dig holes and die in them.

My answer would be that I don\’t think WWII did end the Depression…..

3 thoughts on “Good point here”

  1. The argument is a fallacious one. Having a world war deliberately to end the Great Depression would indeed be ridiculous, but for the sake of argument the war could have ended the depression without having been specifically engineered to do so, without having to be either ‘sensible or effective’.

  2. The war mostly traded unemployment for debt. Yes, it created more jobs, but also added $200+ billion dollars of debt.

    It’s the tax cutting in 45 and 48 that really did the job.

  3. Re armament in Britain that started about 1935 must have employed more jobless.
    Being age 75+ now I suspect it enabled me to be born (one way or another) – the military were taking on workers.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *