Economic Confusion, Part 2

There's a lot of flack in the air about how the rich are getting richer and everyone else is getting poorer. People are quoting all kinds of numbers and blaming all sorts of people for all the troubles we are having.

I think we are looking at the situation all wrong.

Back in the early 20th Century we had the stock market crash of 1929, followed by the Great Depression, followed by World War Two. During the great depression there were some make-work programs run by the government to try and put people back to work. The Civilian Conservation Corps was one of these programs and they built some marvelous structures, things that are still with us and still impressive. However, from what I hear it seems that all those make-work programs had no discernible effect on the economy. If continued to be stumble along as if nothing had changed.

It wasn't until World War Two came along that things started to improve, economically speaking. This does not make a great deal of sense. Here we have the government borrowing tons of money, more than they ever borrowed before, and spending it on stuff that was going to get used up and or destroyed. There were tremendous capital investments in the factories for making war machinery, but they were really only good for that one purpose, and only for the duration of the war.

However, after the war, the economy boomed for a good long time. What was the deal then? The government was in debt up their eyeballs. There was quite a bit of new technology available that was developed during the war. There was the thrill of victory. There was pent up demand from years of deprivation. There was a huge number of men entering the workforce. Why did the economy boom?

It kept booming up until about twenty years ago or so, when things started slowing down. We have many of the some things in play now that we had at the end of World War Two: lots of debt, lots of new technology, some men returning from war. We don't have the thrill of victory. The majority has not been suffering deprivation. But our economy is in the dumper.

What happened? What changed? Is it really due to some mystery numbers some pundits are throwing around? Or is there something else going on?

Maybe we are running into the limits of what we can do with our current model of civilized society.

Maybe our system needs a shock.

Could it just be that our attitude is different? We don't have an external enemy to fight, not one that is any kind of real threat anyway, so we start squabbling amongst ourselves. For all our mushy talk about peace, I wonder if we aren't really happier when we are fighting a war. Since World War Two we've had the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, two Gulf Wars, and the War in Afghanistan. But none of those was on the scale of World War Two, none involved the entire country down to the sugar and salt on your table.

I wonder if this wasn't what prompted the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt to build the pyramids, a massive project that consume the entire country, something everyone could focus on. Maybe that's what we need.

Maybe that's what we need if that's what we want. If we want a booming economy that tramples over everything that gets in it's way, then we need a single focus for the entire nation, and war may be the only thing we can get the majority to get behind.

Ah, if only there were a state religion, then the head of church and state could declare a holy mission to . . . to do something, pave the streets with gold or something. Then we would be all be busy. There might be some shortages here and there, but we would have a purpose, a glorious purpose, a god-given purpose. Something to do besides hang out down on the corner and complain about the way things are.