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January 9, 2025
Items Unavailable in the US During WWII
Rationed:
January 9, 2025 at 04:01 PM | Permalink
Comments
My dad grew up in England during the war. Thus he loved spam, we didn't! He met my mom on a Royal navy tour and moved to the US after he completed his obligation. He was rail thin and loved butter among other rationed foods.
Posted by: Gregory Perkins | Jan 9, 2025 10:13:44 PM
Rationing is the imposition of restrictions without need.
In the First World War, the UK imposed rationing on its people. The French did not. The UK economy and armament production struggled. (I speak of aircraft production, which I have studied in depth.) The French economy, without rationing, thrived. In the First World War, France was the arsenal of democracy. France produced airplanes for its own air force; for the British RNAS, RFC, and RAF; for the Italian air force; for the Russian air force; for the Greek air force; for the Serbian air force (not a big demand, there); and for the American Army Air Service. Leaving out the UK, France produced more airplanes than the rest of the world, including its enemies. Without the expense of administering an unneeded ration program.
After the Second World War, the British and Germans were rationed. Even with financial aid from the US under the Marshall Plan, rationing continued in the UK until 1952. Germany suffered under US occupation. The JCS order 1067 directed the U.S. forces of occupation in Germany to "take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany". Ludwig Erhard abolished rationing in 1948 and the German economy thrived and created the Wirtschaftwunder, the Economic Miracle, aka the Miracle on the Rhine. Hunger ended. Volkswagen got going big time.
Rationing means a state-directed, centrally-planned economy. It is stupid and slow and counterproductive. When the US implemented rationing in the Second World War, the 'smart boys' at the rationing board abolished packaged sliced bread because they thought it wasteful and that delivering unsliced bread would reduce consumption. What happened? Wheat consumption rose! The women who were forced to cut their own bread cut it thicker than the sliced bread they had bought. Unsliced bread created a black market for bread knives. Only an overeducated, arrogant, ignorant idiot with a Harvard degree could think himself capable of condensing a billion individual economic decisions made every day into one direction for a year. After a year of failure and misery, the gov't repealed the ban on sliced bread.
History is clear. No one needs rationing. It is counterproductive. It is harmful.
Posted by: antares | Jan 9, 2025 6:02:41 PM