Posted on 10/21/2024 6:21:34 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
I never understood the delusion that destruction of useful things produces prosperity by their direct replacement (not to be confused with upgrades, tearing down an aging building with a better one, etc). I won’t become prosperous if every monday wednesday and friday I dig a hole, and on tuesday, thursday, and saturday fill it back in.
Similarly I recall an article in Forbes some years ago claiming that the refugees in Germany were good for the economy as they will get government money to spend at shops, etc. ...as if the germans weren’t capable of spending their own money.
People need to ask cui bono.
Usually it’s Deep State.
Thanks!
“I won’t become prosperous if every monday wednesday and friday I dig a hole, and on tuesday, thursday, and saturday fill it back in.”
You’re gonna be in big trouble talking like that! That’s Mother Government’s, ‘path to prosperity’ for all of us. ;)
Shame on you, it is more correctly called ‘Non Binary Government of no particular gender or orientation but capable of chest feeding.’
LOL! She’ll always be a ‘mother’ to me! ;)
Similar reasoning applies to giving welfare payments to the underclass.
If there was no underclass, taxpayers could have spent the money on themselves.
Excellent point. Society will always have poor people; churches and other charities were quite successful in helping them out.
Once Mother Government could buy votes by making it a ‘generational lifestyle’ she had to keep a gun pointed at the heads of others to pay for it.
Check any ‘government program’ that was designed to ‘help.’ None of them are ever self-funding.
Grrrr!
Thanks for posting. Bastiat BUMP!
In addition, losing a war may lead to better economic circumstances for a society in the form of peace, the cancellation of the debts of the prior regime, and the installation of a better regime that fosters rebuilding and economic growth with a small military establishment. Germany and Japan both experienced this after WW II.
The war was a net benefit to neither Japan, nor Germany. Nor to Britain nor America. At least it ended the Roosevelt administration’s fixation on “managing” the economy, but that would have happened once Roosevelt died, anyway.
Thanks Mewzilla!
(1) As part of the price of American help in wartime, Britain had to give up her system of imperial preferences and permit American goods into her empire and make her patents in radar, nuclear power, and much else free to American manufacturers;
(2) America's manufacturing base expanded immensely and dominated the world economy for decades after the war;
(3) The US and her system of allies became and remains the dominant world political and economic power in the decades after WW II; and
(4) The American alliance formed during and after WW II was able to defeat Soviet communism during the Cold War, thereby extending the world's long era of general peace and prosperity under American leadership.
(5) During the 1970s and 80s, the American dollar became the world's primary trade and reserve currency, which has permitted the US to enjoy cheap and abundant financing for its welfare state and for hundreds of millions of Americans to enjoy a secure and healthy retirement.
In the long run of history, the US and Allied victory in WW II made the US and the world more peaceful and prosperous.
I will agree to the degree that America was less harmed by the war and gained RELATIVE advantage. Had America sided with Germany, she might have “benefitted” even more. America, and the world would have been better off without the war. Giving Commonwealth countries the freedom to trade with the U.S. was mutually beneficial.
The rest of the two keywords, sorted:
America siding with Hitler and the Nazis in WW II would have been a nonstarter, to put it politely. The end of Britain’s system of imperial preferences benefitted her colonies but hurt Britain, as did the loss of potential patent earnings. Supposedly, British negotiators were shocked at the hard bargain they had to accept from the US.
No way we could have supported Germany in WWII.
Now, WWI was an entirely different animal. Had Britain actually allied with Germany, in the Central Power’s fight against Russia, I could make the case that we would have been much better off.
The UK should have stayed out of it and would have if Germany hadn’t gone through Belgium. WWI without the UK would have been a replay of the Franco-Prussian War with maybe a Balkan sideshow!
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