[Jim Bremner]

After WWII was done with, the Allies got together to rebuild Europe and Japan.

We need to look at how to rebuild America. The U.S paid ton's of Millions of greenbacks into the Marshal plan and it's Sister plan for Japan.

America Financed the Factories of Europe and Japan.

NOW is the time that we look into not sending one thin dime out to another country. We need to stop being a wellfare state and create workfare.

I grew up in the '80s High schools had Metal Shop, Wood Shop, Print Shop etc.

We trained our youth that they could build something. We no longer do this and it's breaking America.




The Marshall Plan (from its enactment, officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was the primary program, 1948–51, of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger economic foundation for the countries of Western Europe, and repelling the threat of internal communism after World War II. The initiative was named for Secretary of State George Marshall and was largely the creation of State Department officials, especially William L. Clayton and George F. Kennan. George Marshall spoke of the administration's desire to help European recovery in his address at Harvard University in June 1947.[1]

The reconstruction plan, developed at a meeting of the participating European states, was established on June 5, 1947. It offered the same aid to the USSR and its allies, but they did not accept it.[2][3] The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948. During that period some US$13 billion in economic and technical assistance were given to help the recovery of the European countries that had joined in the Organization for European Economic Co-operation. This $13 billion was in the context of a U.S. GDP of $258 billion in 1948, and was on top of $12 billion in American aid to Europe between the end of the war and the start of the Plan.[4]

The ERP addressed each of the obstacles to postwar recovery. The plan looked to the future, and did not focus on the destruction caused by the war. Much more important were efforts to modernize European industrial and business practices using high-efficiency American models, reduce artificial trade barriers, and instill a sense of hope and self-reliance.[5]

By 1952 as the funding ended, the economy of every participant state had surpassed pre-war levels; for all Marshall plan recipients, output in 1951 was 35% higher than in 1938.[6] Over the next two decades, Western Europe enjoyed unprecedented growth and prosperity, but economists are not sure what proportion was due directly to the ERP, what proportion indirectly, and how much would have happened without it. The Marshall Plan was one of the first elements of European integration, as it erased trade barriers and set up institutions to coordinate the economy on a continental level—that is, it stimulated the total political reconstruction of western Europe.[7]

Belgian economic historian Herman Van der Wee concludes the Marshall Plan was a "great success":

"It gave a new impetus to reconstruction in Western Europe and made a decisive contribution to the renewal of the transport system, the modernization of industrial and agricultural equipment, the resumption of normal production, the raising of productivity, and the facilitating of intra-European trade