US Attack would "Stimulate the US Economy"?

There was a discussion in chat last night that was carried out amongst me and several other ATS members, and I quite frankly haven't seen anything similar discussed on ATS.

During World War 2, (after the US became involved, thus post "Great Depression) the US Economy boomed, with development of tanks, planes, and weaponry...jobs exploded, and the economy got into grand shape. The argument was that because the US was in the midst of war, that the production of military gear, and weapons had to be met and exceeded at a certain rate, and thus money put back into the economy.

The question I'd like to ask in general is...if the US was attacked in anyway, as an act of war, be it Iran, China, Russia, whomever...would it help boost the country out of the Economic Crisis it is in? Or was it different back then? How so?

I know some people's ideas, but I'd like to hear opinions and ideas from others.

I think i heard somewhere they said that this iraq war was the first time, the economy has not benefited from war. If i am wrong here, sorry, but i think i heard it somewhere.

A bankrupt america is dangerous, for the world. People wanting to hold onto there power, are dangerous, and i am glad that even though russia wants to be friends with people, they are aware of this.

[edit on 10/13/2008 by andy1033]

We as a country have lost the infra-structure to build a war machine.We do not have enough steel mills left to even start.We get our steel from over seas.Along with most of the sundries it takes to manufacture,jets,tanks,cars,computers and advanced weaponery.

Thing is, Sept 11 was used to boost our economy. It was failing then. Look back at a 10 year timeline of the DOW and you can see that. As soon as the war began, our economy BOOMED. What we are seeing now is just the result of things slowing down back to normal. I'm not necessarily blaming the previous economic downturn on Clinton, it could have very well been Bush Sr.'s fault. Who knows. Now, we can't afford another 'attack -> war -> economy boost.' The only direction it can go is down right now. By now means is is a crash though. Just headed back to pre-war numbers.

Daddyroo45, I'm no so sure about "lost the infra-structure", I think we just don't have people in control of the government who know how to fight a war, to get that "boom" going. We as a powerhouse country, have not lost the ability, meerly the leadership (a large component, do not get me wrong). That is just my opinion though.

andy, I believe the whole thing is just as I mentioned above. We don't have the people in control who know how to fight a war. Bush's father didn't know how to do it either. Again, meerly my opinion.

If you have the humans and you have the technology, you can do anything.

There is an abundance of labour all over the world, there is an abundance of physical resources, there just seems to be a chronic shortage of will to move in the right direction.

This principle could easily work applied to any form of manufactured resources, not just military. In fact I think military would not be nearly as beneficial as it was post WW1 and 2 because the tools of death have become smaller and smaller, requiring less and less labour to manufacture. There is no place for millions of tanks and such in modern warfare, only planes and bombs that strike from distance with great accuracy and destruction.

You could argue that the federal reserve has been attacked and is stimulating the economy by printing money and depositing free electronic credits in whatever bank needs it.

Since traditional warfare is kind of a dangerous idea these days a better form of warfare would be an economic war. We could plant and harvest more cotton and and timber to support the printing war machine. We could create more ink for the bills and develop faster computers to deposit more pretend credits in more banking institutions at a faster pace.

A global conflict will not be fought with conventional weapons or conventional means. A nuclear exchange coupled with biologicals, virus,
chemical weapons and who knows what else the weapon designers have come up with would essentially wipe out civilization as we know it so perhaps it wouldn't do the economy much good.

And yeah, it was different back then; during WWII America made steel; now we make happy meals.

This argument is flawed. In economics, it's called the broken window fallacy. Look it up.

War does not create wealth. It destroys wealth.

The economic "booms" from any wars were purely due to massive borrowing by the government. These "booms" produced no real wealth. The government cannot do this now because the US Government is already in debt up to its eyeballs. Any large-scale attempt to borrow by the government now is going to cause a currency collapse.

Count on it.

I would have to agree strongly with you on that wha. It certainly does seem that way, the US seems more interested in financing some rather ignorant projects (what was it, polar bears or something we were funding a research project on?). For that matter...I can see timespan of wars getting shorter with todays weapons...being more of a matter of "well, we're gonna get nuked, put our nukes in the air, make sure we take them with us."

So...on that note I do agree.

One thing I won't really agree on is that the US has lost all capabilities, I think it's more of an issue that they have forgotten what that "burn" really feels like.

Being forced into another war would cripple the economy beyond belief. It would be like kicking a terminally ill patient. We simply can't afford it - financially, emotionally, or in the manpower required.

Although an attack would shift attention away from the financial mess, it would serve as a kick in the teeth to the middle class and a deathblow to the lower class. It would take years or even decades to rise from an attack on US soil. People can't deal with it right now.

If the attack was self inflicted, it would be suicide. If it comes from an actual enemy, this may be the golden moment to strike.

So would it stimulate the economy? The only thing it would stimulate is a collective gut-wrenching downturn in emotion. This is very different from WWII when people were easily rallied to defend their nation - people now are just sick of this dark world. I think most people are aware that the last thing we need right now is to add to this darkness.

Originally posted by whaaa
A nuclear exchange coupled with biologicals, virus,
chemical weapons and who knows what else the weapon designers have come up with would essentially wipe out civilization as we know it so perhaps it wouldn't do the economy much good.

Large scale warfare is too destructive to be of any use to the economy. All the best most destructive weapons have already been invented. No what we need is a large scale war of smaller proportions.

Small scale warfare offers up the best hope for stimulating the economy. Bring the war to the little people, street level fighting has great potential for economic growth. We have the potential to equip every U.S. citizen with automatic weapons and grenade launchers.

The CIA could arrange some back water deals to arm the opposing populations so that it would be a fair and balanced conflict with the potential for a long term war.

We would need to cloth and feed all the citizen soldiers so the clothing and farming industries would thrive.

We would need to house all of these citizen soldiers in tents since they would be on the move and we will be destroying entire city blocks. We could rebuild the infrastructure after the war.

reply to post by Shugo


I started this thread i think last month it basically relates to the same thing youre kind of alluding to (world war III)
Thread

Originally posted by baseball101
reply to post by burdman30ott6

 

i'm telling you all of this is leading up to something major ... with all of these financial problem's .... all the world having to do bail out's/stimulus package's ... it seems to me like there is going to be a war very soon ... haha i know it's a broad statement, but seriously the u.s. is losing superpower status and most of the world's economies that interact with the u.s. economies went down ... and what else better to do then go start a war and push the blame on someone else .... haha just a thought it would boost the economy as well as the "war lords" pockets so idk maybe a fake terrorist attack to provoke it?? idk sorry that middle part was kind of off topic but i really do think that with the addition of another stimulus package it would just result in the same thing as the first a need for a bail out .... just a thought i just don't really see this getting any better unless something "big" happens....