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As the war clouds gather round us again the War Will Make Us Rich theory of economics rears its ugly head in the bars and in many business circles once more. In the past even state and national historians have publicly insisted the theory is true that war will save our economy and in some mysterious, magical way boost the supply of bucks bumping around in our pockets as we "SPEND OUR WAY out of a depression." Unfortunately, Not even the alleged purchase of 30,000 body bags keeps the new advocates of the War Will Make Us Rich theory from fervently contemplating the burst of prosperity this coming war with Iraq will bring to us. According to this delightful little theory, as the body bags fill up with the youth of our nation, each parent can know that every child getting stuffed into a body bag was worth a sack full of silver dollars to the economy. By the same token, it is lightly tossed off that those veterans who come home with limbs missing, lungs seared, or minds scarred forever are doing their bit to improve the finances of American economy too. |
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Does that chug-a-lug bar room theory make sense to you? Were we richer every time a cargo ship went down? Were we richer for removing the healthiest workers from the job market and paying them to be in harm's way If this theory is true then at the end of World War I we should have thanked the Germans for making us richer, instead of insisting on the harsh reparations that fueled World War II. In World War II Germany pounded England with bombs, bullets and ballast until there were no pounds left in the Royal Treasury. Was England richer because of it? Or was Churchill right when he said there was nothing but beer cans left to throw at the German invaders when they arrived? Did he throw out a welcome squad every time a new bale of English banknotes were printed by German presses and delivered to shores of the United Kingdom? Was the U.S. any richer because the Japanese destroyed our Pacific fleet and we had to replace it and all the trained men who were killed and maimed? When German cities and tanks and munitions were destroyed did its economy soar? Did the Viet Nam war prosper us -- or them? Did the first Gulf War enrich us -- or raise gas prices? When the World Trade Center collapsed did money magically appear from the ashes? Has even the War on Terror managed to flood our coffers? Can you get a drought to end by pouring your last gallon of water down a rat hole? Can you put more bread on the table as Roosevelt tried to do by burning off half the wheat in the field? The common sense answer to all these questions is NO! Does the Government understand something we don't? |
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If any of these questions could be answered with a YES there could only be three things making it profitable.
I'll examine these one by one. Does war pay because we kill off our young people? Then why send them off to some dirty, filthy, unhealthy foreign country to do them in? It would be much simpler to just line all our High School football players up on the streets every Fourth of July -- with the richest kids right out there in front -- and have our mayors and police mow them down with brand new machine guns. Does war pay because we scrap our equipment? Then let's roll all of it into the ocean and make it do a David Crockett SKOW as it goes down. Maybe if we let Hollywood film its demise we can get paid twice. Does war pay because we spend our money with reckless abandon? If so we don't have to waste it on killing and destruction... Instead, let's pay the mothers of this great nation for raising bright children. For each child producing straight A-s pay the mother (or guardian) $10,000.00 per year. For each child producing nothing less than a B, pay the mother $5,000.00 And, for each child producing nothing less than a C, pay the mother $1,000.00 Wouldn't that be a hoot? Instead of crying because they have lost a child in some crummy, jerkwater country, there would be tears of joy because their child had applied brains to the chalkboard! Do wars ever produce anything besides indebtedness, death and destruction? When war comes to the United States there is the illusion that dollars are spinning, up for grabs by the highest palm greasers as the economy shifts to war materiel production. When the war is over that illusion of loose silver dollars quits spinning and we invariably pay for the war with a grim economy, and nothing but Tricky Dick gold left to shore up our ravaged treasury. *** Destruction does not breed wealth. Killing off the youth of this planet does not improve anyone's economy. Let those who believe in the theory that War Will Make Us Rich, count up the carnage of wars past and explain where the replacement funds for the money we rolled off the hot presses came from. Ask them to explain these figures: In 1914 our national debt was $2,912,499,269.16 By 1919 our national debt was $27,390,970,113.12 How much richer had the war made us? Remember too that from then, right up to this very day we are still paying pensions and health care for some of the veterans who came home from that war. Add it ALL up.
By the time 1939 got here our national debt was $40,439,532,411.11 By 1945 our national debt had exploded to $258,682,187,409.93 and again, we had not yet begun to pay off our debts to the veterans who fought our war. War made us Rich?Get real! War
slapped a saddle on our backs |
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What about Little Wars
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