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From: russ@ihuxf.UUCP (Russell Spence)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Free Enterprise, the Depression and Unemployment
Message-ID: <2552@ihuxf.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 5-Feb-85 21:20:55 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxf.2552
Posted: Tue Feb  5 21:20:55 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Feb-85 02:51:02 EST
References: <825@ratex.UUCP> <467@whuxl.UUCP>
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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> market system.  There is no doubt in anyone's mind that World War II with
> its consequent enormous government expenditures on the supplies of War
> for both the US and allies brought the US out of the Great Depression.
> How could this be? How could massive government expenditures bring
> the country out of a Depression that had been languishing for years?
> What does this historical evidence tell us about the knee jerk opposition
> of free-market ideologues to any government intervention in the economy?
> It tells us their abstract theories do not adequately explain the REAL WORLD
> in which we actually live.
>  
> it is important to consider the lessons of the Great Depression and just
> how exactly the country both got into it, and *out* of it.
>   tim sevener   whuxl!orb

This is simply not true.  It wasn't the expenditures of WWII that got us
out of the depression, it was the rebuilding of Europe and Japan that
got us out of the depression.  Times were still very tough during the
war.  Granted, they always are during war-time, but it wasn't until after
the war, and the rebuilding programs began, that the recovery really started.
There is alot of money to be made rebuilding the massive damage caused
by a world-war.  And yet, it can also be argued that even now we are not
free from the effects of the Depression.  Along with the so-called recovery
that WWII brought us, it also brought us the first instances of national
debt.  The deficit.  This is what we have had to live with since then, and
don't fool yourselves, until it goes away, this country will not be really
healthy.  There is no free lunch.  I just hope that this country doesn't
have to learn that fact the hard way.
-- 

						Russell Spence
				(new path ->)	ihnp4!ihuxf!russ
						AT&T Technologies
						Naperville, IL