Happy Daze

        After reading yet another comment from someone  of my approximate  age group in a letter to the editor, a pattern is emerging which I have noticed with sadness  for several months but not written about. That is that many (not enough, but many) decry some of Trump's more inflammatory comments, but all desperately believe, or rather hope,  that he can deliver on his campaign mantra "Make America Great Again." The issue is that "Great" can never be what they wish it was. 

        There's a lot happening emotionally  on several levels with these persons. First, they may not even consider themselves as bigots, but they wish non whites, LGBT persons and, to an extent, women,  would just "settle down" like in the "good old days" when we never heard much from them about their situations as second class citizens. "If we don't see it or hear about it,  it isn't  a problem" seems to be their mantra.

        Of greater concern, however is the fact that there is an incredible lack of understanding of  history and economics which is at play in Trump's harangues. Persons of my age who grew up in the late 1940s and 1950s did so as youths with very little understanding of why America was as it was during those years.

         The vast majority of Americans have no idea that there have been 35 significant recessions since 1789, when we declared ourselves to be the USA. Almost none realize that five of those actually resulted in worse economic conditions for poor Americans than the "Great Depression." Even fewer know,  or want to know,  that all five of these serious economic downturns began under  Republican administrations.  Their parents knew the economic deprivation of the 1930s all too well, but the message was lost to their children in post war euphoria and relative (for white males) prosperity. It is reminiscent of the way Irish survivors of the Great Famine never spoke of it.

        By the mid 1930s, after 6 or 7 years of the worst (actually not the worst, but the most protracted) economic downturn in our history, German activities in Europe and the need for more armaments than the combatants themselves could supply, along with government deficit spending to create jobs, the economy improved.  In late 1936, the economy tanked again. Reasons  vary depending upon which economic school of thought one credits. Keynesians assign blame to cuts in federal spending and increases in taxes at the insistence of the US Treasury, while Monetarists, such as  Milton Friedman, assign blame to the Federal Reserve's tightening of the money supply in 1936. Either way, corporations pulled back, decreased investment, unemployment  spiked back up to the area of 18% and the economy slid backward. So what did finally end the misery and put America back to work ("Make America Great") again?

       Roosevelt's promise to be "The Great Arsenal of Democracy"  in a Dec. 29,1940 speech really only formalized the process which had begun earlier with the destroyers for bases agreement and the "Lend Lease" bill. The combined effect of this was the beginning of a return to full production in US heavy industry, producing military hardware and even more profitable, expendables,  like ammunition and artillery shells.

        However, these still paled in comparison to the effects of the events of  December 7th, 1941, a year later, when Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor propelled us from the bench to the playing field on both continents. Unemployment dropped like a rock, not because of peace time prosperity's return, but for two much more significant reasons. In 1939, the entire US military strength was 334, 473. By 1942, that number was just shy of 4 million, and by 1945, there were more than 12 million Americans in uniform or dead/missing/wounded.  The second reason was that those who were not in uniform including, for the first time in many cases, women,  were at work, employed in "the War Effort." There was actually a labor shortage and industrial production paid well, even for women, who moved into supervisory roles for the first time in America. By 1945, unemployment was less than 2% of all  employable Americans.

        Many of us know this, but some don't process the results as a cause and effect exercise. During the worst of the depression, there had been precious little discretionary income for the vast percentage of American families. Necessities, such as food and shelter, consumed most of what income was brought into the household. Welfare, as it was then, left no excess. WWII changed all that for those who weren't involved in the active military. Overtime was the norm, wages soared, and ironically, there was not much to spend them on. Movies were cheap, baseball was cheap and many workers worked well in excess of 46 hours per week. All those consumable and big ticket items forgone during the worst of the depression were now in reach but unavailable,  because the facilities which might have produced them  were making bombers, jeeps, tanks, and weapons. Things like refrigerators and new cars, not affordable in 1934,  were simply unavailable in 1944! Only 749 "new" cars were produced in the years 1943-44, and were reserved for government and industrial officials (a blurry line during the War!)

        So why go into all this? I think it is critical to understand the conditions which  left the US poised in 1946 to become the economic giant of the 1950s, which is the "Happy Days" fantasy world  of the older Trump sycophant. It might not have happened that way if not for several prescient actions.

        WWI's ending and the return of a mere 3 million to the workforce had seen large unemployment figures and social unrest in the early 1920s. Determined to avoid a re- run, The President and Congress did several things proactively, The first was the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the GI Bill, even before war's end, which provided for a significant  (over 4 million) number of  demobilized service persons to go to college or advanced industrial training instead of immediately flooding the job market.  The second was the brainchild of one of America's brightest and best, Truman's SecState, George C. Marshall.  Known as the Marshall Plan, but technically the "European Recovery Act,"   it was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion (approximately $120 billion in current dollar value as of June 2016) in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. Of course this aid to Europe did two things, it kept Americans employed, it helped rebuild markets for US goods, and because we did somewhat the same, albeit less formally in Japan, we created post war markets there, as well.

        Because we now also realized that the Soviet Union also had aims in Europe and East Asia, we also opted to maintain a permanent military of more than 5 times as many as 1939. These were to be augmented by events in South Korea, which escalated the Cold War to the degree that by 1968, we had more than   3 1/2 million Americans in uniform.  These circumstances combined to create in the "Happy Days"  of my peers, economic conditions  which reflected situational factors which are essentially unique and non-replicable. Examples include:

• ·      American heavy industry turned to consumer goods, and those Americans who had piled up money in wartime had it to spend on new cars, refrigerators, and the new toy, television.· 

•        This new medium, sweeping the nation, created unprecedented access for retailers into American homes, further spurring consumer demand.
•           Wartime innovation caused a glut of new products,  US manufacturers were ready to produce them, and US consumers wanted them.
• ·           Many traditional trading partners were still rebuilding their means of production, while US facilities were at maximum output, so unemployment averaged (a very low) 4.16%  between 1953 and 1956!·       
•       Through the end of the 1950s the US was relatively self sufficient in many raw materials. That has changed dramatically over the last 6o years.
• ·           Manufacture of essentially all consumer electronics, was a domestic  bonanza during the golden age of TVs, VCRs etc., but  has shifted offshore.  The same is true for clothing manufacture.      
•             What we used to see occasionally in the mid 50s and usually referred to as "foreign cars" are now in many of our driveways, being cheaper and better warranted than most US made vehicles.
• ·       US minorities did not benefit from this post war boom to the same degree as whites. Blacks remained  in segregated and inferior schools in much of America until the very late 1950s,while the LGBT community remained largely in hiding. Women were in many cases pushed back below the glass ceiling if allowed to continue working at all. 

        Most of the conditions above are one time singularities, and many have been caused  by the Donald Trumps of this world. To believe that he, or anyone else for that matter, can recreate the United States of the mid 1950s is fatuous and unrealistic. Unfortunately, his rabid adherents know or remember little of  their own history , economics or geopolitical change, therefore they actually believe what they fantasize about, wishing for a return to Arnold's Drive-in/diner where they can hang out with Ritchie, Potsie, Ralph and the Fonze. And guess what? There aren't any colored kids or homos there!