Am hoping someone can answer my question.
I was reading a book recently that deal with certain events from around 1900 to around 1930s/40s.
As I was reading it, there was an offhand comment by the writers that wartime spending in WWI (that’s WW ONE, mind you), such as manufacturing and steel production for the allies, pulled us out of a recession.
However, I don’t recall that there was a recession at that time.
Was there, or are the authors mistaken.
Historian Thomas E. Woods, Jr. commented on the 1920-1921 recession.
Also see this post as it might be relevant to your question.
No, it seemed clear to me the authors weren’t speaking of the 1920-21 recession, which I am aware of.
The comment seemed clear that war time spending DURING WWI (which was before this) pulled us out of a recession.
Since the authors are, AFAIK, progressives and prior comments from them led me to believe they don’t understand economics, it that they are mistaken and there was no recession.
The real question is, who cares? They can easily rig this statistic temporarily by borrowing. It’s like you going to the bank and borrowing a million dollars and calling yourself rich.
Death, mayhem and destruction do not create wealth, these activities destroy real wealth. What happens that the government sponsoring the death, destruction, and mayhem loans a lot of money and buys lots of things people do not want. And the most significant costs are never measured: 1. The loss of productivity of the people killed or wounded, and 2. The cost of taking care of war veterans and victims, can never be computed.
But I am not familar with WW1, my evidence looking at stock market number is that WW2 did nothing to get the USA out of the depression. I use the value of the Dow Jones which I view as a superior measure to GDP as most of the stock market is used to fund capital for consumer demanded activities. The Dow Jones did not recover to its 1929 levels until November of 1953 or over 8 years after VJ day and 24 years after the Crash of 1929. And think how much less the currency was worth in 1953 vs 1929 and the exit from the Gold Standard in 1933?