policy - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
B. THE US ECONOMY PRIOR TO 1961
1. An Overview 5/
As was mentinned above, in 1940 there were some 10 million
unemployed American workers. In 1941, immediately prior to the US's entry
into Worlk War II and after eight years of the New Deal, there were still
some eight million unemployed. A couple years later mass unemployment was
a th 4 ng of the past. Prosperity was everywhere, with farm i,'come, for
example, doubling in four years. As Godfrey Hodgson described it,
The war boom brought record rorporate profits .
but it also meant an end to hard times for most other
sections of the population. Even allowing for inflation,
real wag(':s jumped by 44 per cen-. in the four
years ,)f the war. The proportion of families living on
incomes of less than two thousand dollars a year fell
from three quarters to one quarter of the population.
6/
During the four years of US
involvement in World War II, national income,
national wealth, and indust.ial production all doubled or more than
doubled.
For the sake of comparison, it is instructive to note that during
the same period the Soviet Union's already much smaller industrial capacity
was cut by more than 40 percent.
out of the war poorer and weaker than it went in.
Every other indistrial country also came
After the second atomic bomb was dropped over Japan, Winston
Churchill remarked that "A 1 rarica stands at this moment at the summit of the
world." Economically, and rot just militarily, this remained true after
the war.
In 1947 the US produced about half of the wnrld's manufactures:
57 percent (or 90 million tons annually) of its steel, 43 percent of its
electricity, 62 percent of its oil, 80 percent of its new cars.
After four
years of war that had done serious dimage to the economies of its closest
competitors, the US
emerged as the only country with capital to invest in
new plants. In the late 1940s the average American's income was 15 times
greater than that of the average continental European. The housing and
domestic appliance markets were booming. The US was dominant in such key
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