[aspiring.hillbilly]

It is implied in manufacturing that methods, tooling, and processes have to be devised to facilitate the process from materials to finished goods. I didn't say that merely line manufacturing jobs create wealth, the entire act of manufacturing creates wealth. This is a profound view of a nations economy that our leaders have lost sight of, not a simplistic view.

As things stand now, we could not manufacture an equivalent amount of war material that was manufactured in WWII, with twice the population. Should a world war on a similar scale occur, we would be SOL.
We cannot even keep a few hundred thousand troops in the middle east adequately supplied right now...

[Alberta's Child]

World War II was the last time anyone fought a large-scale land war of that magnitude. Advances in technology and war-fighting capability have made a WW2-style military obsolete.

The U.S. may be incapable of "nation-building" in Third World sh!tholes, but we could probably sink an enemy nation's entire 500-ship navy in about 45 minutes.

[Tallguy]

Should a world war on a similar scale occur, we would be SOL. We cannot even keep a few hundred thousand troops in the middle east adequately supplied right now...

Consider how much more destructive modern weaponry is today. Then consider how 'networked' the world economy is. The result: WW3 would either be very brief, or it must not be fought at all -- take your pick.

Nobody is going to build fleets of bombers, ships & tanks the way we did in WW2 becaused modern warfighting doesn't require them. Therefore the manufacturing sector that builds them will be much smaller, and highly integrated -- and therefore more vulnerable to disruption.

[Alberta's Child]

We cannot even keep a few hundred thousand troops in the middle east adequately supplied right now.

If FDR had proposed a $600 billion Medicare prescription drug plan in 1939, World War II never would have taken place at all -- because the Japanese wouldn't have bothered attacking three canoes and a couple of rickshaws at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

[elbucko]

As things stand now, we could not manufacture an equivalent amount of war material that was manufactured in WWII, with twice the population.

This is true. In 1939 the USA had less than 4,000 aircraft registered, both military and commercial. In the month of April, 1945, America produced over 4,500 aircraft in just that month alone. Even accounting for the differences in the complexity of propeller aircraft to jets, the equivalent level of production, adjusted for technology, could not be achieved by the US in 5 years. Even with the Chinese, supervised by American lawyers, programming the computers.