But in the immediate aftermath of the war, there was nothing for consumers to buy. You could get a good deal on a tank. Where would you park it? And why?
It took a while to change over the factories that made tanks back to making automobiles and washing machines. And it took a while for the economy to absorb all the men newly released from military service.
1949 was not a particularly good year for most people. It took a few years before the boom times started up. At least, that is what people who lived it have told me.
And they were faced with a very large problem of transitioning that war time production capacity that provided jobs and production into civilian needs and wants.
Returning servicemen needing jobs, extant production workers faced with war-product jobs faced with no need for their output, all with the need to repay the war debt and generate a replacement economy.
Difficult problem. The kind that resulted in regime/administration changes. Churchill was tossed out, remember? It’s the economy. The US was only able to do better because of their new overseas world military role and the advent of the Korean war.