What Will It Take to Jumpstart Job Creation?

Question: It seems to be fairly well accepted that the military build-up for WWII was what finally brought us out of the Great Depression. Is there any movement afoot for the government to effectively replicate that kind of “ordering” of green hardware and green job training to give our economy the boost toward job creation and economic growth we seem to need?

Paul Solman: Well, look, that’s what the stimulus package is all about.

As to the “fairly well accepted” explanation that WWII lifted us out of Depression, it may well be true. But it’s worth noting that most Americans were living in very straitened circumstances during the war – there was rationing – and that the country was rife with fear of massive unemployment and a sharp downturn when several million soldiers returned from the battlefield. The post-war boom is often also attributed, therefore, to “pent-up demand”: the idea that Americans felt they had been deprived for so long, it was time to start spending. And that enough consumer breakthroughs had been made – in everything from air conditioning to kitchen appliances to cars – that there was plenty to spend one’s money ON.