Hi. I was just reading the comments on a post at Crooked
Timber on how/if WW II ended the Great Depression:
http://crookedtimber.org/2008/12/07/the-economic-lessons-of-world-war-ii/
And found this gem:
> HH 12.07.08 at 5:26 pm
>
> The bottom line on WWII economic stimulus is that weapons in wartime
> were the only public goods to which America would commit vast
> resources. Thus, it follows that for large public works to be
> undertaken, Americans must disguise them as warlike measures (e.g.,
> The National Defense Student Loan program, or the National Defense
> Highway Network).
>
> With history as our guide, it should be simple for us to disguise
> train cars as rail-guided vehicular killing systems and nuclear power
> plants as death-ray power generators. Investments in inner-city
> schools can easily be relabelled as child-soldier training, and
> gasoline conservation measures can be represented as terrorist
> funding denial measures.
>
> It is really very simple. For pathologically bellicose Americans to
> justify public expenditure, they must be persuaded that they are
> investing in killing people.
Well, I thought it was funny.
---David
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