The Folly of Stimulus

by Price Fishback:

One sign that Keynesian budget deficits were not the key to bringing the U.S. out of the Great Depression is what happened after the war. Every Keynesian predicted that the private economy would go into a recession because the large government budget deficits would be eliminated and so many men would be returning from the war jobless. Instead, as government deficits receded, private consumption and investment boomed. Resources were no longer allocated to producing munitions and instead were devoted to production of typical consumer goods and services.

Some people might misconstrue this discussion as saying that the U.S. should not have fought the war. The point here is that World War II was a period of sacrifice when many Americans experienced deprivation on par with what they experienced in the latter stages of the Great Depression. Vast budget deficits were not a stimulus in the normal sense of the word because the U.S. was a command economy devoted to an all-out war effort. William Tecumseh Sherman famously stated, “War is hell.” We should add the phrase, “even when financed by large budget deficits.”