Some small bit of philosophic reflection is due about economies and these wars. What government economists have been recently schpeeling as empirical gospel is quite telling when splashed like a Rorschach ink blot upon the pages of history.
From American Epoch, A History of the United States Since the 1890s, Arthur S Link, William B. Catton, 1955, 1963, 1965, 1966, Alfred A Knopf, Inc., publisher, cc# 83-12398, Part III: Second World War and Uncertain Peace Chapter 23 The Second World War: The American Home Front [Section] 178. Mobilizing Manpower for War
[...] All told, draft boards registered some 31,000,000 men, of whom 9,867,707 were inducted into service. Including volunteers, a total of 15,145,115 men and women served in the armed services before the end of the war - [...]
[Section] 183. The Greatest Tax Bill in History
Americans accustomed to normal federal expenditures of about $8,000,000,000 annually during the 1930's found it difficult to comprehend the magnitude of federal spending during the Second World War. Federal expenditures aggregated $321,212,605,000 from 1941 to 1945. [...]
It was, as the President [FDR] said, "the greatest tax bill in American history," designed to raise more than $7,000,000,000 in additional revenue annually, a sum exceeding total federal revenues in any peacetime year before 1941. The measure increased the combined corporate income tax to a maximum of 40 per cent, raised the excess profits tax to a flat 90 per cent, and provided for a postwar refund of 10 per cent of excess profits paid. [...]
In retrospect, perhaps the most significant aspect of the tax program from 1941 to 1945 was the way it reflected the nation's conviction that a war for survival should not become a war for the enrichment of the few. There could be no "swollen fortunes" when the federal [graduated] income tax reached a maximum of 94% of total net income, to say nothing of state income and local property taxes. Indeed, the nation's top 5 per cent of income receivers suffered their severest relative economic losses in the history of the country during this period. Their share of the disposable income declined from 25.7 percent in 1940 to 15.9 per cent in 1944. And with an excess profits tax of 95% and corporation income taxes reaching a maximum of [a later] 50 per cent, there were few cases of "swollen profits." Net corporation income was $9,400,000,000 in 1941 and 1942, increased slightly in 1943 and 1944, and fell back again to $8,500,000,000 in 1945. Dividends increased hardly at all during the same period.
[Section] 184. Combating Inflation on the Home Front
[...] [Total population] Disposable incomes rose from $92,000,000,000 in 1941 to $151,000,000,000 in 1945, but the supply of civilian goods and services measured in constant dollars, rose from $77,600,000,000 to only $94,400,000,000 during the same period. [...]
Now, as a philosopher to be safe I must quote Twain here:
Facts are stubborn, but statistics are far more pliable.
But, at the same time having self-effaced the statistics I quote from American Epoch with the Twain quote, I will also say, there simply is not enough room in a TPC article to describe all the comparative inequity that could be brought out by the disparities between the economic conduct of the Second World War and the current wars as noted by this book and contrasted with our current economic history.
It also goes without saying some of the very same racial disparities in the economy are also occurring when we consider where the few jobs that are being created by these current wars, other than on the front lines, are being feverishly apportioned by Congress.
Here, in my town, Limestone, Maine, we have a military HumVee refurbishment and ruggedization facility that has been running full tilt. You can guess how many minorities work there, if I give you a hint by prompting you to ponder the minority population in northern Maine. Blacks, Asians and Hispanics are about as common here in northern Maine as Palm Trees.
And Dianne Feinstein is certainly not the only U.S. Senator who is raking in "swollen profits" for her relatives. It is widely rumored here that even Senator Susan Collins' family is massively profiting from these wars by middle-manning chipboard from the J.M. Huber Corporation into the stream of material headed for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Americans are not just being asked to sacrifice their own destructive economy for an even more destructive economy, and, their barbaric sense of moral right for another more perverted and made-to-order morality for this war effort.
Americans are being asked to sacrifice their historic sense of right and wrong, and, truth and honesty.
These wars summoned by the treasonous fraud of 9-11 have wholly proven the destruction of the democratic nature of our Republic.
We are all victims.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
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