# U.S. nearly bankrupt at end of WW2, sez "Flags of our Fathers"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 20, 2006, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-nearly-bankrupt-at-end-of-ww2-sez-flags-of-our-fathers/381111 "2006-11-20T05:53:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2006, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-nearly-bankrupt-at-end-of-ww2-sez-flags-of-our-fathers/381111/21 "2006-11-20T22:07:10Z")
[QUOTE=BeachMountainQQ] Hollywood Lies! So does the Main stream Media News and also the newspapers and magazines! [/QUOTE] What does this have to do with the question asked in the OP? ---
**Author:** ![Rico](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rico/32/3582_2.png) [@Rico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rico)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2006, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-nearly-bankrupt-at-end-of-ww2-sez-flags-of-our-fathers/381111/22 "2006-11-20T22:56:47Z")
\ **BeachMountainQQ** : Your contributions to this point have been negligible. The majority of your posts have been incoherant ramblings about the news media, communists, and the like. I’ll only say this once, so listen closely. \*The main rule of this board is “Don’t Be A Jerk”. Your posts so far have not been enough to dissuade either the moderators or the regular posters that you’re not in violation of that rule. Be prepared to give cites about your statements. If they are simply your opinion, that’s fine, but keep your opinions in the proper forums. \* Next is an official warning, then it’s goodnight Irene. Bring your level of intelligence up. Maybe read some posts before you post again? See how it’s done here? Don’t make us take steps that everyone will regret. \ ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2006, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-nearly-bankrupt-at-end-of-ww2-sez-flags-of-our-fathers/381111/23 "2006-11-20T23:48:35Z")
[QUOTE=Sailboat] Which was it? Was there massive inflation after the war or not? Sailboat [/QUOTE] I suppose that people were afraid of there being _hyperinflation_ after war’s end. And there WAS an inflation spike… but not a hyperinflation. As per **Exapno** ’s cite, eventually things balanced out as the consumer economy spooled up. As the war progressed into '45, a lot of the home-front propaganda kept up the drumbeat that the situation remained as dire as the darkest days of '42. I suppose in part this may have been because although for _some_ things and not others they’d be in a tight spot, you get better cooperation from the public if you make the claim universal. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2006, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-nearly-bankrupt-at-end-of-ww2-sez-flags-of-our-fathers/381111/24 "2006-11-21T00:29:02Z")
[QUOTE=BeachMountainQQ] Hollywood Lies! So does the Main stream Media News and also the newspapers and magazines! [/QUOTE] Yeah, only trust what you read on the Internet! Preferably only if I wrote it. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2006, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-nearly-bankrupt-at-end-of-ww2-sez-flags-of-our-fathers/381111/25 "2006-11-21T02:40:53Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase] The difference between the U.S. and all other countries engaged in major modern wars is that the U.S. came out of the wars in better shape than it went in, rather than being a bankrupt, mentally and materially exhausted nation. (Parenthetically, I’m convinced this has played a major role in other countries’ resentments of the U.S. over the years.) [/QUOTE] I’m not convinced this resentment (as distinct from understandable annoyance at immature and selfish behaviour) exists. If you were right then ill-feeling against the US would have diminished as these other countrys’ standard of living approached that of the US; instead we see the opposite. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2006, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-nearly-bankrupt-at-end-of-ww2-sez-flags-of-our-fathers/381111/26 "2006-11-21T04:23:26Z")
No. This is emblematic of why resentment is never understood and never properly dealt with. James C. Davies made a brilliant theoretical observation that is called the J curve of rising expectations (the Davies J-Curve for short). I remember when I first encountered this in college and being stunned by its simplicity and explanatory power. A good one-paragraph summary can be found at [Davies J-Curve Revisited](http://www.fragilecologies.com/jun27_03.html) > [@](#): > > In the late 1950s, a period of coups, emerging guerilla wars and wars for independence, James C. Davies came up with a theory about rising expectations and the likelihood of armed conflict. His idea became known as the Davies J-curve. Here is how it works: for a given individual, life is getting better in real terms: increasing salary and benefits, improved nutritional status, the ability to purchase better modes of transportation, among other items well beyond his or her basic need. However, the individual wants more than s/he can afford. S/he thins that his or her standards of living should be getting better at a faster rate than it is. In other words, the pace of reality is not keeping up with his or her expectations about how much better it should be. Nevertheless, while it may be frustrating to the individual not to have his or her reality keep up with his or her rising expectations, the individual’s situation is not so bad that it leads either to conflict or to frustration. That’s the situation in an era of rising expectations, as it was, say, in the 1960s. The curve can be applied to an astounding number of historical situations. It explains why there were so few slave rebellions, why the French revolution took place when it did, why the civil rights movement occurred just when blacks had their best treatment in American history. Doing a search I see that a book on the subject has just been published, [The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall, by Ian Bremmer](http://www.amazon.com/Curve-Understand-Nations-Rise-Fall/dp/0743274717). > [@](#): > > With this timely book, political risk consultant Bremmer aims to “describe the political and economic forces that revitalize some states and push others toward collapse.” His simple premise is that if one were to graph a nation’s stability as a function of its openness, the result would be a “J curve,” suggesting that as nations become more open, they become less stable until they eventually surpass their initial levels of stability. In other words, a closed society like Cuba is relatively stable; a more open society like Saudi Arabia is less so; and an extremely open society like the United States is extremely stable. Bremmer expertly distills decades—sometimes centuries—of history as he analyzes 10 countries at different positions on the J curve. North Korea is perhaps the most disturbing example of the left side of the curve, where a closed authoritarian regime produces effective stability; on the right of the curve sit stable countries like Turkey, Israel and India. This leads Bremmer to conclude that political isolation and sanctions often work against their intended results and that globalization is the key to opening closed authoritarian states. Bremmer persuasively illustrates his core thesis without eliding the complexities of global or national politics. Sounds fascinating. I just discovered it, so I obviously haven’t read it, but he seems to have the understanding of what makes the J Curve so powerful. So back to **Askance’s** remark. Other countries getting closer to American standard of living may make them less resentful or it may kick up the resentment to lethal levels. Look at the surprise of our leaders when they found that terrorists and suicide bombers tend to be middle class and educated about western values rather than hopeless poverty-stricken victims. The J Curve makes this an obvious outcome: they never considered it and chaos and failure have been the result. ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2006, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-nearly-bankrupt-at-end-of-ww2-sez-flags-of-our-fathers/381111/27 "2006-11-21T14:01:46Z")
[QUOTE=ralph124c] So once the war ended, the armed forces had to get rid of enormous amounts of material, which was almost worthless-how was this done? (My uncle (WWII Italian Campaign vet) swears he saw brand new jeeps, tanks dumped into the ocean! [/QUOTE] Most aircraft were scrapped to recover the aluminium. I daresay the same was done with many vehicles and ships, but most were sold off dirt-cheap as war surplus or donated to help rebuild friendly countries. If none of these were easy options, then it was indeed dumped or blown up. Lets face it, what are you going to do with e.g. a couple of thousand brand-new tanks in Italy? Give some to the Italians, keep a few for your post-war forces, then what? Shipping them back to the states is expensive and there are tens of thousands sitting outside the factories anyhow. Local steelworks may not have been able to scrap the armour plate and there was probably plenty of other scrap steel around. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-nearly-bankrupt-at-end-of-ww2-sez-flags-of-our-fathers/381111.md?page=1)