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So I’m not saying the US economy would have done as well without war as with, only that it was already on pretty good shape by end of 1941 and would have stayed good even absent Pearl Harbor.

Which is it....doing well by 1940 or 1941??

You're all over the place.

So my point still stands: FDR did not need a declaration of war to achieve the benefits of war-time production.

Yes he did.

You're not going to get the full scale ramp up and conversion of the US economy to a wartime economy just to provide aid to the UK and USSR.

1941 represents the ramp-up to WWII.

You do realize we were already beginning to ramp up defense spending in 1939 and 1940...right? Carl-Vinson act of 1940 ring a bell?

AND, 1942's 5% unemployment is STILL more ramp-up than it is the war itself, which did not hit high-gear until 1943.

1942 is due to the war and the draft. And of course it took some time for us to fully ramp up production of which we began to scale back in 44 to a degree.

Second, if you go back to my post #63, the unemployment graph there can easily be interpreted as saying what I posted -- that by the end of 1941, the U.S. was rapidly approaching 5%.

Except you said unemployment was 5% in 1940....

I'm still trying to figure out why you're supporting one of easily the worst presidents in US history who:

threatened to pack the courts

massively expanded government.

eagleone: " Which is it....doing well by 1940 or 1941??
You're all over the place. "

Both.
1940 numbers were good enough to get FDR reelected for a THIRD term.
1941 numbers were even better.

eagleone:"You're not going to get the full scale ramp up and conversion of the US economy to a wartime economy just to provide aid to the UK and USSR."

FDR didn't need any of that to get reelected for a THIRD term in 1940.

eagleone: " Except you said unemployment was 5% in 1940.... "

No, you posted that, I said nothing of the sort.

eagleone: "I'm still trying to figure out why you're supporting one of easily the worst presidents in US history who: threatened to pack the courts massively expanded government."

First, how did a "worst" president get reelected THREE times?
Obviously many Americans then disagreed with you.

But I don't defend ANY of the New Deal or FDR's unconstitutional redesign of Federal government.
Republican Presidents Harding & Coolidge showed how to turn a depression into prosperity and that is the model Hoover & Roosevelt should have followed.
But FDR's wartime leadership was thought at the time and since then to be commendable -- it's why he kept getting reelected.

So I would not invent motives just to mock FDR, claiming he provoked war just to "cure" the Great Depression, where no evidence for such a motive exists.