The myth of wartime prosperity

I noticed the David Broder column arguing that what really ended the great depression was prosperity brought on by wartime spending and frenetic government activity. As Wendy Honett points out on Antiwar.com, however (with links I would have had to spend more time tracking down; thanks), Robert Higgs and others have documented that WWII did not bring on prosperity but the illusion thereof. Of course unemployment declined as hundreds of thousands and then millions were drafted into the military, but the real indicators of prsoperity didn't kick in until around 1946, when most wartime economic restrictions were eliminated in one fell swoop.

As Robert Higgs himself put it to Wendy: "if you mix one part historical superficiality, one part economic confusion, and one part sheer immorality, you get the combination that qualifies a journalist to become known as the dean of the Washington press corps.” I did a review of Bob Higgs's book on the myth of wartime prosperity, but I can't find it this moment in the register archives.

Reconnecting with, er, mature libertarians

I put up this post on the Register's Orange Punch blog the other day. Not much to add to it except that I was immensely gratified at how many people expressed an interest, by showing up, in what I had to say. I've had an e-mail to the effect that the talk was recorded, but it didn't have an attachment. I'll try to obtain it and post it both here and at the Register.

It’s been a long time since Orange County has had a libertarian supper club, but if I do say so the one that started last night with Murray Rothbard and Sam Konkin as inspirations and me as speaker is off to a pretty good start. I saw the e-mails to the Karl Hess Club list from Mike Everling on Thursday noting that there were only 22 reservations and urging those who wanted to attend to make themselves known. By last night there were at least 70-75 people in attendance. I saw people from LA and San Diego whom I haven’t seen in years. Like me, come of our local libertarians are getting a little long in the tooth, but the level of enthusiasm was high.

Of course it’s not a hard sell to convince libertarians that war is not healthy for liberty and other living things. I used Robert Higgs’ book “Crisis and Leviathan” to explain how wars and depressions have led to dramatic growth in government and restrictions on civil and economic liberties through the 20th century, with a “ratchet effect:” at the end of a war or crisis government gives back some of the powers it seized on a supposed emergency basis, but not all. At the end of each war government is a little bigger and a little more intrusive, and people have become accustomed to it, so there’s an ideological shift. I also referenced the late Brown political scientist Eric Nordlinger’s 1996 book, “Isolationism Reconfigured,” which argues that the U.S. would do well to declare North America the U.S. sphere of defense and let the rest of the world take care of itself.

Thanks to Mike Everling and Howard Hinman, who have been willing to do the organizational work to get this supper club — which will meet only when there’s a fifth Monday in a month for now and be focused on geostrategy and economics — going. And thanks to all those who came up and said they get something of value from the Register editorial pages. One doesn’t always hear that — indeed, complaints tend to predominate — and I appreciated it.

WW II didn't end the depression

As I note in this book review, few people any more believe that the New Deal ended the Depression, but lots of people believe that the depression was ended by World War II. Robert Higgs, author of the classic "Crisis and Leviathan," in his new book, "Depression, War, and Cold War," knocks that one out of the water. Not only was unemployment reduced mainly by the military draft, production and spending on non-military items was flat or falling throughout the war. We only got significant economic growth beginning in 1946, when most of the wartime controls and restrictions were lifted.

The seductive, destructive siren song of statism

It is so easy to get caught in the day-to-day swirl of events that we are tempted to forget or not to notice that larger principles, some of them timeless, are at work or at stake. In this piece from the Mises Institute, historian and economist Robert Higgs (he of the great classic "Crisis and Leviathan," reminds us how seductively the State draws us into its world of destruction. "The state is the most destructive institution human beings have ever devised -- a fire that, at best, can be controlled for only a short time before it o'erleaps its improvised confinement and spreads its flames far and wide." People fail to recognize this "because they are told incessantly that the tribute they fork over is actually a kind of price paid for essential services received, and that in the case of certain services, such as ptrotection from foreign and domestic aggressors against their right to life, liberty and property, only the government can provide the service effectively."

After discussing the New Deal, World War II and 9/11, Higgs concludes that "Until people learn to disregard the state's siren song of beneficence and protection, they will continue to suffer and die as victims of the state's wars, foreign and domestic. People yearn for security, and they look to the state to provide it, but they are calling upon a wolf to guard the sheep."