| jluetjen |
01-22-2008 02:52 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by WI wide body
(Post 3720166)
The only major war in the history of the world to be financed by credit, by the way.
|
As opposed to...
Quote:
The United States has had public debt since its inception. Debts incurred during the American Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation led to the first yearly reported value of $75,463,476.52 on January 1, 1791. Over the following 45 years, the debt grew, briefly contracted to zero on January 8, 1835 under President Andrew Jackson but then quickly grew into the millions again.
The first dramatic growth spurt of the debt occurred because of the Civil War. The debt was just $65 million in 1860, but passed $1 billion in 1863 and had reached $2.7 billion following the war. The debt slowly fluctuated for the rest of the century, finally growing steadily in the 1910s and early 1920s to roughly $22 billion as the country paid for involvement in World War I.
The buildup and involvement in World War II brought the debt up another order of magnitude from $51 billion in 1940 to $260 billion following the war. After this period, the debt's growth closely matched the rate of inflation until the 1980s, when it again began to skyrocket. Between 1980 and 1990, the debt more than tripled. By the end of 2005, the gross debt reached $7.9 trillion, about 8.7 times its 1980 level.
(From various Wikipedia subjects)
|
Quote:
In 1917 and 1918, the United States government issued Liberty Bonds to raise money for its involvement in World War I. According to the Massachusetts Historical Society, Because the first World War cost the federal government more than 30 billion dollars (by way of comparison, total federal expenditures in 1913 were only $970 million), these programs became vital as a way to raise funds.
|
(Sigh) Always fast and loose with the facts in order to stretch your point. :rolleyes:
Debt is a time-honored method to finance wars. It even predates the US.
- France was deeply in debt after the 7-year war (Described by Winston Churchill as "The first global war"), which contributed to the French Revolution.
- in 1523, in order to raise money, François I established a government bond system in Paris, the "rentes sur l'Hôtel de Ville" to help pay for the wars with Italy. From 1683 through to 1715 the French national debt increased from 16 million livres to 1,1 trillion livres in order to finance the wars of that time (and other things).
Of course, the other popular method of financing wars is to print money. A brief study of economics would reveal that both methods are essentially the same thing, executed differently.
|
