Quote of the Day

There is a simple reason for all the effort that goes into portraying World War II as "not such a bad thing after all." The state ultimately cements its hold over society by promising to repel the barbarians who always seem to be about to storm the gates of civilization. And if we believe this, we will eagerly surrender liberty and treasure to the state's officers in return for safety. And in case we wonder if the barbarians really are plotting to storm the gates, the state can point to recent episodes when indeed they did, and when the state protected us from them. Thus, the function of the "World War II as the last good war" line is to keep the people from asking uncomfortable questions about the legitimacy of Leviathan. - from The Consequences of World War II by Sheldon Richman, November 1991

I was thinking about money and how we talk about billionaires now the way I imagine people talked about millionaires back in the 1920's. Shoot, even when I was kid in the 50's and 60's, a million dollars was still an impressive amount of money. Now it just means well off.

Anyway, I got to wondering about how much WWII cost all told. I mean there was that line about how you start talking about "a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money". And then there was that scene in Clint Eastwood's movie about Iwo Jima where they are talking about selling war bonds and they need to raise so many billions of dollars or the war effort will collapse, and this is near the end of the war. How many billions had gone before? The same article quoted above says WWII cost the US $350 billion, and that was then. Add in inflation and you could call it $5 trillion in today's money.