Could a Make-Believe WWIII Solve Today's Economic Crisis?

[coberst]

Economic Crisis and WWIII

I have often read statements that indicate that the Great Depression was ended as a result of WWII. By going to war, it is said, we managed to cure the greatest economic crisis in American history.

It is said that today’s economic crisis might to be as bad as the Great Depression. If such is the case perhaps we should take a lesson from the past.

Instead of turning our factories into vast production lines building planes, ships, tanks, and guns and declaring WWIII we might declare a make-believe WWIII and instead of sending these planes, ships, tanks, and guns to far off places where we can kill people and destroy property we could achieve the same effect by building our factories on ships and sending those ships to sea.

War is only our second best consumer of goods, our very best consumer of goods would be a factory mounted on a ship with the assembly line terminating at the ramp on the stern of the ship whereby the product can be easily dumped into the sea.

Such economic prosperity can only be imagined.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

War is only our second best consumer of goods, our very best consumer of goods would be a factory mounted on a ship with the assembly line terminating at the ramp on the stern of the ship whereby the product can be easily dumped into the sea.

Vance Packard made a similar suggestion in one of his books, I think it was "The Waste Makers". He proposed that factories be build near the edges of cliffs with an assembly line on a revolving plate. In good times, the product would roll off the assembly line into trucks and trains to take it to market. In times of economic slowdown, the plate would be turned to have the product fall over the cliff. That way production would remain steady.

 

[Evo]

It's as good a plan as any.

 

[HallsofIvy]

Vance Packard made a similar suggestion in one of his books, I think it was "The Waste Makers". He proposed that factories be build near the edges of cliffs with an assembly line on a revolving plate. In good times, the product would roll off the assembly line into trucks and trains to take it to market. In times of economic slowdown, the plate would be turned to have the product fall over the cliff. That way production would remain steady.

You do understand, I hope, that Vance Packard was being sarcastic. His book was a condemnation of an economy that produces things designed to be wasted in order to produce more.