All Posts Tagged With: "world war II"
Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
For decades the prevailing view among historians has been that because the American people were too stubborn and stupid to concern themselves with foreign wars, President Franklin Roosevelt had to lie for a noble cause—namely, waging war against imperialist Japan and Nazi Germany. Seldom have historians asked themselves why Americans would want to stay out [...]
30Nov2011 | Jim Powell | 5 comments | ContinuedGreat Wars & Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal
Essential to the maintenance of support for the government (almost any government, any time) is the idea that the nation’s wars have been just and heroic, and that the leaders who presided over them were great men. Ugly truths about those wars and leaders are routinely swept under the rug. Court historians (and yes, democracies [...]
21Sep2011 | George C. Leef | 24 comments | ContinuedDepression, War, and Recovery
Keynesians find comfort in rising macroeconomic aggregates while ignoring how flesh-and-blood people actually live.
9Sep2011 | Sheldon Richman | 25 comments | ContinuedThe Myth of U.S. Prosperity during World War II
World War II, the so-called Good War, has been a fount of historical fallacies. One of the greatest—and one of the most pernicious for subsequent policymakers—is the notion that prosperity prevailed during the war. Although Americans might have been dying in the Pacific and European theaters of war, people on the home front actually benefited [...]
8Sep2011 | Robert Higgs | 2 comments | ContinuedWhich Strategy Really Ended the Great Depression?
“World War II got us out of the Great Depression.” Many people said that during the war, and some still do today. The quality of American life, however, was precarious during the war. Food was rationed, luxuries removed, taxes high, and work dangerous. A recovery that does not make—as Robert Higgs points out in Depression, [...]
24Aug2011 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 6 comments | ContinuedWar Would End the Recession?
In his September 28 New York Times blog post, Paul Krugman announced that “economics is not a morality play.” That turn of phrase is his way of defending the idea that in unusual times, such as the sort of deep recession we are in, we can get strange relationships between economic cause and effect. The result [...]
22Dec2010 | Steven Horwitz | 41 comments | ContinuedWhy American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism
In one of his most iconoclastic essays, “The Anatomy of the State,” Murray Rothbard observed that it is crucial to ruling groups to manipulate the thinking of the ruled. They must get the populace to accept that the rulers are truly good people working tirelessly to advance the common good. Toward that end, the rulers [...]
22Dec2010 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | ContinuedAndrew Higgins: Boat Builder of WWII
Who was Andrew Higgins? Almost forgotten now, he was, according to Dwight Eisenhower, “the man who won [World War II] for us.” As General William T. Sherman observed, “War is hell.” That hell includes oppressive taxes, loss of freedom, and crushing debt, as well as deaths in combat. But once in war, as the United [...]
22Dec2010 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 7 comments | ContinuedThe Newspeak of Paul Krugman
No critic of free-market economics can ever again accuse us of being irrational and immoral when it is Paul Krugman who says destruction creates wealth, and war is an acceptable second-best path to economic growth.
30Sep2010 | Steven Horwitz | 39 comments | ContinuedWilson’s War: How Woodrow Wilson’s Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and World War II
It is difficult for many of us to understand the almost euphoric enthusiasm with which millions of Europeans marched off to war in the summer of 1914. For almost a century the people of Europe had, in general, lived through an amazing time in which living standards for practically everyone reached heights never before known [...]
9Jul2010 | Richard M. Ebeling | 3 comments | ContinuedPrivate Capital Consumption: Another Downside of the Wartime “Miracle of Production”
Although the so-called miracle of production in the United States during World War II persuaded many economists and others to accept the validity of the basic Keynesian model, this interpretation rests on important errors of commission and omission to which I have called attention over the years. (See especially the studies brought together in my [...]
24Mar2010 | Robert Higgs | 3 comments | ContinuedWhat Ended the Great Depression?
What finally ended the Great Depression? That question may be the most important in economic history. If we can answer it, we can better grasp what perpetuates economic stagnation and what cures it. The Great Depression was the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. From 1931 to 1940 unemployment was always in double digits. In [...]
24Feb2010 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 43 comments | ContinuedWorld War II Ended the Great Depression?
In his 2008 book, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, Paul Krugman writes: “The Great Depression in the United States was brought to an end by a massive deficit-financed public works program, known as World War II.” He has since repeated this bon mot in a number of columns and television [...]
23Oct2009 | Richard W. Fulmer | 29 comments | ContinuedChurchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”
As a soldier, politician, and writer, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874–1965) made a deep imprint on world history for more than half a century. He is best known for rallying his countrymen during the fateful Battle of Britain when he was prime minister—thereby, many people believe, stemming the flood that was sweeping Adolf Hitler to [...]
11Jun2009 | Robert Higgs | 71 comments | ContinuedReal Jobs Create Wealth
If the government’s projects were truly worthwhile, they would be undertaken by private efforts, and in their quest for profits, entrepreneurs would handle them more efficiently.
Remember this when President Obama begins to boast about how successful his stimulus plan is.
21May2009 | John Stossel | 11 comments | ContinuedThe Great Depression and World War II
What about World War II? Did it end the Great Depression? More generally, is war good for the economy? I answer both in the negative and borrow here from Ludwig von Mises: “War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.” As Higgs points out, because of the array of interventions in the wartime economy, war materiel was valued incorrectly and therefore the GDP data overstate economic conditions. Moreover, conscription and arms production gave a misleading employment picture
21May2009 | Art Carden | 7 comments | ContinuedThe Two-Price System: U.S. Rationing During World War II
As the United States mobilized for war after mid-1940, the government’s demands for munitions and related resources began to put pressure on certain markets, and soon prices began to rise. In 1941 they rose faster: from December 1940 to December 1941, the producer price index increased by 17 percent, the consumer price index by 10 [...]
24Apr2009 | Robert Higgs | 5 comments | Continued-
The Latest
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
Update below. Controversy rages over the Obama administration’s mandate that all employers – including... Read More
The Snow Plowers’ Petition
The following might have happened in a small college town in upstate New York… In a cold and snowy... Read More
Super Bowl versus Education?
In the spirit of Super Bowl weekend I’d like to deconstruct a Facebook status update that a friend... Read More
Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are... Read More
Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet.... Read More
