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Fangz posted:The idea that productivity *decreased* during WWII in the US is insane to me. Why? Consider unemployment. At first glance, WWII saw pretty much full employment in the US. That's a good thing, right? Well, the problem is it was full employment because a whole lot of people were taken out of the civilian economy where they could have produced useful things and shoveled into a furnace where hundreds of thousands of them were killed and injured. So clearly you can't look at employment during WWII and consider it the same thing as employment during peacetime. Same thing with GNP. What are you actually measuring with that? Are you treating the production of hundreds of iron bombs that are dropped on a factory with some tiny percentage of them actually hitting the target and the rest of them making holes in the ground as productivity that's the same thing as making a car? Simon Kutznets, who basically created the GNP measurement, did a lot of work on this and it's not a clear-cut thing: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=138 quote:By contrast, Simon Kuznets, a pioneer in national income accounting, expressed many concerns. In National Product in Wartime Kuznets noted that national income accountants must make definite assumptions about “the purpose, value, and scope of economic activity.” He observed that “a major war magnifies these conceptual difficulties, raising questions concerning the ends economic activity is made to pursue; and “the distinction between intermediate and final products.” Moreover, “war and peace type products . . . cannot be added into a national product total until the differences in the valuation due to differences in the institutional mechanisms that determine their respective market prices are corrected for.” Then there's the underlying issue is that price information goes out the window, so how do you estimate GDP in the first place? quote:Finally, one can make an even more unorthodox—which is not to say incorrect—argument for rejecting the conventional wisdom. One can simply argue that outside a more or less competitive equilibrium framework, the use of prices as weights in an aggregation of physical quantities loses its essential theoretical justification. All presumption that price equals marginal cost vanishes, and therefore no meaningful estimate of real national product is possible.[22] Phanatic fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 16:04
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That's a lot of words but what it comes down to is defining a special case definition of productivity after the fact specifically to rule out war production. And which generally comes down to specifying one sort of production as being better than another. Well okay you can do that but again that's goalpost moving - you're really saying 'war didn't boost the production of the stuff I want to boost'. That's not exactly an interesting argument to have, is it? How much relative value do you put on a tank to defeat hitler vs a radio set? In the second passage you quote, there is support for a productivity decrease, rather it says the entire question is unanswerable. If you ignore the war period, you see that productivity post war in the US, with the shift back to civilian production, is a lot higher than before, both in total amounts and per capita. So whatever military industry was created during the war could be converted back to civilian use. Ultimately there's an usual meaning for productivity in the literature and in the US over WWII it increased a lot. I'm not super interested in the semantic argument. Edit: quote:Consider unemployment. At first glance, WWII saw pretty much full employment in the US. That's a good thing, right? Well, the problem is it was full employment because a whole lot of people were taken out of the civilian economy where they could have produced useful things and shoveled into a furnace where hundreds of thousands of them were killed and injured. So clearly you can't look at employment during WWII and consider it the same thing as employment during peacetime. To clarify, this discussion is going to hinge on what degree you think 'dead Nazis' is in fact a highly useful thing to produce. Fangz fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 16:30
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Fangz posted:Ultimately there's an usual meaning for productivity in the literature and in the US over WWII it increased a lot. I'm not super interested in the semantic argument. I don't disagree with that. The point remains that consumer prices and wages rose rapidly in the US over WWII. I suspect that at least part of that was because of the war effort soaking up both labour and production capacity for consumer goods (no tanks in the CPI basket).
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Dec 5, 2016 16:50
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Mr Enderby posted:I don't disagree with that. Then it doesn't make a lot of sense that inflation increased *further* in the post war period as war production was reconverted into civilian production.
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Dec 5, 2016 16:52
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Raenir Salazar posted:From watching the Extra Credits series on the History of Money I think they would've figured out some form of paper currency a lot sooner and switched to it (For the war's duration and then switch back to gold/silver soon after that). China in the same period may be instructive as they repeatedly come up with a scheme for paper currency, it works great for a little while, then someone overdoes it and the whole thing collapses.
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Dec 5, 2016 16:57
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I thought the idea was that paper currency required a centralised government the likes of which didn't really exist until after the 17th century in Europe? Whereas China had a strong central government and bureaucracy that enabled paper/fiat currency earlier than that.
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Dec 5, 2016 17:03
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MikeCrotch posted:I thought the idea was that paper currency required a centralised government the likes of which didn't really exist until after the 17th century in Europe? Whereas China had a strong central government and bureaucracy that enabled paper/fiat currency earlier than that. Granted I only have the one source but it seems like in China it was more of a bottom-up thing the government just happen to take advantage of, they had it sorta, but it doesn't to appear to me as being a centralized thing, the big development was a Central Bank to act as a lender of last resort and a bunch of other regulations and "patches" to the system and that took a lot longer.
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Dec 5, 2016 17:05
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Double post
Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 17:06
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Fangz posted:Then it doesn't make a lot of sense that inflation increased *further* in the post war period as war production was reconverted into civilian production. You had a butt load of pent up demand and limited supply even once things got in full swing. Lots of wartime savings too plus a fuckload of GIs coming home with military pay. One of my grandfathers bought a gas station with his wartime savings, the other bought a farm and put enough aside in the bank for my father and his three siblings to go to parochial schools. 4 years of combat pay and zero living expenses makes a hell of a nest egg, and multiplied across the whole US military and that's a lot of cash hitting the economy at once. Hell even dead soldiers contributed. A great aunt of mine was made a widow by the battle of the bulge and bought a house with her husbands life insurance.
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Dec 5, 2016 17:10
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Fangz posted:Then it doesn't make a lot of sense that inflation increased *further* in the post war period as war production was reconverted into civilian production. You have a whole bunch of pent-up demand (and forced savings because it was pent-up) hitting the economy all at once. More dollars chasing a limited supply of goods = inflation. Fangz posted:That's a lot of words but what it comes down to is defining a special case definition of productivity after the fact specifically to rule out war production. And which generally comes down to specifying one sort of production as being better than another. It's not goalpost moving, it's a real serious question about what is actually a useful definition of production. GDP only includes final goods, not intermediate goods. At one end of things, the government could have drafted people into the military and put them to work, paying a salary to dig holes in the ground. Would those holes have counted towards your version of productivity? quote:To clarify, this discussion is going to hinge on what degree you think 'dead Nazis' is in fact a highly useful thing to produce. GDP is not a measure of how useful what you produced is. Intermediate goods are enormously useful, you can't produce final goods without them, but they are not included in GDP. If you think a suggestion that American productivity declined during WW2 is insane because you think dead Nazis are highly useful, that's fine, but that's not something that you can quantify with GDP. If it could then every piece of wasteful military spending during the Cold War could be used to say the GDP was enormous on the grounds that "Communists not invading Western Europe" were very useful things to produce. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 17:51
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Tias posted:Out a window. Ramping BT tanks over rivers was considered a practical alternative to waiting for the engineers to build a bridge. I don't know if this was ever done in wartime though.
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Dec 5, 2016 18:26
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I'm pretty sure I remember that as well as one being a mild steel prototype and jumping it better. I think that was Arnhem.
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Dec 5, 2016 18:43
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WW2 Data Today's update is on General Purpose bombs in the British Explosive Ordnance Inventory. What's the difference between bombs under 1000lb and those over it, with regards to their tail units? What color is generally associated with a timed fuzed? And what the heck does "explodering" mean? Seriously, I have no clue.
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Dec 5, 2016 19:21
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xthetenth posted:I'm pretty sure I remember that as well as one being a mild steel prototype and jumping it better. I think that was Arnhem. It was a Cromwell troop, and the crossing wasn't planned for - according to the account two of the tanks made it across the canal but the third one hit brakes and fell in. I have no idea if the story is true or plausible, it sounds all kinds of fantastic to me, but there you have it. The mild steel bit was about the armour merely bending instead of flaking when hit by German AA guns, yet another bit that sounds a bit doubtful. But veterans never tell tall tales so it must be all 100% true!
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Dec 5, 2016 19:24
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Alchenar posted:The other thing is that the vast expansion of the US merchant marine fleet occurred as European merchant fleets vanished from the oceans (for obvious reasons), so the US had a period where it had relatively free reign to muscle in on trade routes. And also, e.g. trade and investment within South America, a lot of which was British in the late 19th century. Defending democracy for the whole duration of two world wars (ok, yes, p arguable for the first one but still) as a nation heavily focussed on manufacturing exports and maritime trade did a serious number on Britain's economy in the end, to American businesses' benefit.
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Dec 5, 2016 19:57
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Fangz posted:Ultimately there's an usual meaning for productivity in the literature and in the US over WWII it increased a lot. I'm not super interested in the semantic argument. What is your argument, anyway? I don't get what you want to say. P-Mack posted:It's an interesting question to consider how the 16th/17th century European economy would have handled the potential deflation without all the gold and silver from the new world. Fewer wars? More? I dunno. I *think* that's a negatory, good buddy. I hope to understand this a little better once I get back to "A European tragedy", but it seems that even with gold as money being true, the heads of Europe were not constrained by this. Because bankers were actually able to deficit finance the Holy Roman Emperor (etc.) cash was a matter of good credit rather than actually having the money. The real restricting factor was how much more money you were likely to have rolling in the next year or two. I guess if Spain didn't have literal gold mines in the new world, they would be more restricted in their credit - though people who know better than I would have to say if that'd prevent any actual wars. feedmegin posted:And also, e.g. trade and investment within South America, a lot of which was British in the late 19th century. Defending democracy for the whole duration of two world wars (ok, yes, p arguable for the first one but still) as a nation heavily focussed on manufacturing exports and maritime trade did a serious number on Britain's economy in the end, to American businesses' benefit. The economic decline of Britain is tangled up in these things, but it's actually even more complected then that. The British after the first World War did a number on themselves through aggressive budget austerity measures. While the socialist government after WW2 obviously did a lot of important things, keeping much of the economy "managed" was a mistake IMO. Then you have the surprisingly negative impacts of consolidation in prominent industries, the decline in industries that the British were world leaders in (like steam boilers), the infiltration of UK auto unions by KGB agents...it's a big ball of wire that I find fascinating but is admittedly very difficult to untangle thanks to its interconnected-ness.
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Dec 5, 2016 20:47
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I've always kind of felt like the ACW vaulted the US from "growing third rate backwater" into a major global industrial and military power but I guess I don't really have numbers to back up this perception.
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Dec 5, 2016 20:57
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Seems more like the industrial expansion in the post-ACW era was what made it a major industrial power, but it wouldn't have been considered a major military power until WWI at the earliest.
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Dec 5, 2016 21:05
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Nebakenezzer posted:What is your argument, anyway? I don't get what you want to say. Mostly I initially just wanted to disagree with what seemed like ahem, stupid supply side bullshit. But generally speaking I would say that wars had historically both positive and negative effects on the economy. There's a general consensus amongst economists that WWII in the US provides a strong example of war driving economic development (both in the war itself and comparing pre and post war) and those guys are not all crazy. I think also rather than using all this weird civilian productivity thing, this is all really easy to understand using the Philips curve and mainstream economics. Inflation was high during the war and the post-war era because total economic growth was *too fast*. Workers were in high demand with the economy close to full employment. This means firms had to raise wages to attract workers, and raise prices to pay for those wages etc etc.
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Dec 5, 2016 21:14
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bewbies posted:I've always kind of felt like the ACW vaulted the US from "growing third rate backwater" into a major global industrial and military power but I guess I don't really have numbers to back up this perception. I don't think the us became a major power until the 1890s when the Spanish American war happened and everyone suddenly noticed the world class navy the us had built up. The post civil war I think was more the us being noticed as a power in North america. Potent on it's own soil, but not really able to reach beyond that too far.
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Dec 5, 2016 21:23
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bewbies posted:I've always kind of felt like the ACW vaulted the US from "growing third rate backwater" into a major global industrial and military power but I guess I don't really have numbers to back up this perception. It could've been but then we decided not to bother with becoming a global industrial power and focused on killing Plains Indians for the next two decades instead. America's development into a proper world power doesn't really start until the mid-1880s and only really takes off a decade later.
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Dec 5, 2016 21:46
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Fangz posted:Mostly I initially just wanted to disagree with what seemed like ahem, stupid supply side bullshit. But generally speaking I would say that wars had historically both positive and negative effects on the economy. There's a general consensus amongst economists that WWII in the US provides a strong example of war driving economic development (both in the war itself and comparing pre and post war) and those guys are not all crazy. I don't disagree with any of what you've said, except the political position you seem to be projecting onto my posts. The fact that right wing politicians like to talk up the importance of the supply side as an excuse to cut taxes and regulation, doesn't mean that productivity has no role in inflation. It just means the methods suggested by self-appointed "supply side economists" are usually dumb. Fangz posted:I think also rather than using all this weird civilian productivity thing, this is all really easy to understand using the Philips curve and mainstream economics. Inflation was high during the war and the post-war era because total economic growth was *too fast*. Workers were in high demand with the economy close to full employment. This means firms had to raise wages to attract workers, and raise prices to pay for those wages etc etc. Sure. (I mean, I still think that building tanks rather than cars is going to make cars more expensive, but feel free to disagree). My main original point stands. Wars cause inflation. Sometimes this is good, sometimes bad.
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Dec 5, 2016 21:47
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Agean90 posted:I don't think the us became a major power until the 1890s when the Spanish American war happened and everyone suddenly noticed the world class navy the us had built up. The post civil war I think was more the us being noticed as a power in North america. Potent on it's own soil, but not really able to reach beyond that too far. I remember reading somewhere that the Union Army was the most powerful standing army on Earth in April 1865. Obviously that changed rapidly during demobilization, but was this true? It would make sense considering the US had just finished fighting a total war against the Southern States. That said, to your point, it wasn't until the aftermath of the Spanish American war that European powers began to take the U.S. seriously as major player in the world.
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Dec 5, 2016 21:52
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Raenir Salazar posted:Granted I only have the one source but it seems like in China it was more of a bottom-up thing the government just happen to take advantage of, they had it sorta, but it doesn't to appear to me as being a centralized thing, the big development was a Central Bank to act as a lender of last resort and a bunch of other regulations and "patches" to the system and that took a lot longer. Well, Imperial Chinese control of the monetary policy was often much lower than their propaganda claimed. For example, during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong several predominate court officials seriously considered legalizing all counterfeit minting operations, and the Emperor actually ended up declaring silk to be legal tender. There were many banknotes and experiments with paper money from the Tang dynasty onwards. But counter-fitting, unscrupulous administrators, short-sighted imperial policy, and a dozen other reasons ensured that every classical Chinese paper currency suffered from hyper-inflation within a century. Hence, Qing China was back on the silver standard by the opium wars\.
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Dec 5, 2016 22:06
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Solaris 2.0 posted:I remember reading somewhere that the Union Army was the most powerful standing army on Earth in April 1865. Obviously that changed rapidly during demobilization, but was this true? It would make sense considering the US had just finished fighting a total war against the Southern States. That was John Keegan, I want to say. I can see the argument for it, but it's kind of impossible to prove if it's true or not.
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Dec 5, 2016 22:12
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It might be worth noting that there's a big debate raging in economics right now about how to measure productivity, largely driven by its at best anemic growth (relative to historical trends) in the last couple decades.
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Dec 5, 2016 22:53
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Solaris 2.0 posted:I remember reading somewhere that the Union Army was the most powerful standing army on Earth in April 1865. Obviously that changed rapidly during demobilization, but was this true? It would make sense considering the US had just finished fighting a total war against the Southern States. True, and I remember the prussians obseving how strong artillery and a large conscript army was and applying that to the Franco Prussian war. The civil war convinced the European powers that tangling with the U.S. in the new world would be a bad idea, since the U.S. now had experienced officers that could create several large, well organized army and were becoming more aware how good fortifications were. Sadly this atrophied, then the army was back to being a clown show by the time the Spanish American war rolled around.
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Dec 5, 2016 22:59
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:It might be worth noting that there's a big debate raging in economics right now about how to measure productivity, largely driven by its at best anemic growth (relative to historical trends) in the last couple decades.
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Dec 5, 2016 23:00
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Agean90 posted:True, and I remember the prussians obseving how strong artillery and a large conscript army was and applying that to the Franco Prussian war. The civil war convinced the European powers that tangling with the U.S. in the new world would be a bad idea, since the U.S. now had experienced officers that could create several large, well organized army and were becoming more aware how good fortifications were. Do you have sources for this bit? From my understanding of history the prospect of doing anything involving the New World was far from every-bodies mind. Africa and Asia were ripe for exploitation and no matter how confident a country was, I doubt they would be too keen on fighting the British who even when the US was weak were quite happy to bar any further colonization efforts into the area.
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Dec 5, 2016 23:06
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golden bubble posted:Well, Imperial Chinese control of the monetary policy was often much lower than their propaganda claimed. For example, during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong several predominate court officials seriously considered legalizing all counterfeit minting operations, and the Emperor actually ended up declaring silk to be legal tender. What would be the advantage of legalizing counterfeiting? Is it just admitting defeat and not bothering with wasting resources on enforcement?
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Dec 5, 2016 23:12
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Hunt11 posted:Do you have sources for this bit? From my understanding of history the prospect of doing anything involving the New World was far from every-bodies mind. Africa and Asia were ripe for exploitation and no matter how confident a country was, I doubt they would be too keen on fighting the British who even when the US was weak were quite happy to bar any further colonization efforts into the area. Well, there was the French in Mexico.
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Dec 5, 2016 23:57
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dublish posted:Well, there was the French in Mexico. Pretty much this. I dont mean to imply that Europe was looking at 19th century North America with hungry eyes, more that it went from "Well if we have the opportunity" to "lol no"
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Dec 6, 2016 00:07
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It's worth remembering that part of the reason Cinco de Mayo is as big a deal in the US as it is is because it's celebrating a battle that had an impact on how likely the Union thought intervention in the Civil War was.Nebakenezzer posted:I *think* that's a negatory, good buddy. I hope to understand this a little better once I get back to "A European tragedy", but it seems that even with gold as money being true, the heads of Europe were not constrained by this. Because bankers were actually able to deficit finance the Holy Roman Emperor (etc.) cash was a matter of good credit rather than actually having the money. The real restricting factor was how much more money you were likely to have rolling in the next year or two. I guess if Spain didn't have literal gold mines in the new world, they would be more restricted in their credit - though people who know better than I would have to say if that'd prevent any actual wars. I believe selling off crown holdings such as land factored into the funding of wars for rulers that didn't have the same influx of raw cash. xthetenth fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 04:08
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xthetenth posted:It's worth remembering that part of the reason Cinco de Mayo is as big a deal in the US as it is is because it's celebrating a battle that had an impact on how likely the Union thought intervention in the Civil War was. Really? I thought it was a holiday promoted by Mexican-Americans to give themselves their own holiday, since celebrating another country's independence day is poor form. Much like St. Paddy's day.
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Dec 6, 2016 04:30
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sullat posted:Really? I thought it was a holiday promoted by Mexican-Americans to give themselves their own holiday, since celebrating another country's independence day is poor form. Much like St. Paddy's day. I wouldn't be surprised if that's also a major contribution, however Mexico celebrates their independence Day on the anniversary of the proclamation of the war of independence on September 16, 1810, not Cinco de Mayo, which is celebrating the victory at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. The years are relevant, although it seems that part of it is because it was a big deal for the Mexican population of California.
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Dec 6, 2016 04:45
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HEY GAL posted:hot take: the 1950s was the anomaly, the natural state of everything on this sublunar sphere is to suck, dehumanize yourself and face to the 17th century crisis They don't call it the dismal science for nothing.
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Dec 6, 2016 05:03
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sullat posted:Really? I thought it was a holiday promoted by Mexican-Americans to give themselves their own holiday, since celebrating another country's independence day is poor form. Much like St. Paddy's day. Up north it's just an excuse for white people to drink frozen margaritas.
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Dec 6, 2016 05:47
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TerminalSaint posted:Up north it's just an excuse for white people to drink frozen margaritas. Right; up until the 80s or so, it was a regional holiday in Puebla. Starting in the 80s, Mexican-Americans started using it as a Mexican holiday, an excuse for them to have a party. Gradually everyone else picked it up because, hey, any excuse for a Margarita, amirite? I don't think there was a sense of "OK, the US is tangentally involved in the fight against Maxmillian, so let's celebrate here as well", but, "Hey, we need a holiday that's not Mexican independence day to celebrate, this one seems cool" and then it was picked up by everyone else.
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Dec 6, 2016 05:58
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TerminalSaint posted:Up north it's just an excuse for white people to drink frozen margaritas. You know, Mexicans can be white as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexicans_of_European_descent
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Dec 6, 2016 11:14
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Fangz posted:Ultimately there's an usual meaning for productivity in the literature and in the US over WWII it increased a lot. I'm not super interested in the semantic argument. Sorry, but what is that definition? The only one I'm familiar w/ is the output per unit input. I could see the answer for WWII being pretty different if you are talking about output per person hour vs. output per capita, both of which are measures of productivity used in econ literature, at least.
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Dec 6, 2016 17:12
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