PEACE, IT COULD BE WONDERFUL!
Chase, Stuart
Peace, It COULD Be Wonderful! by STUART CHASE This is the second of a series of two articles exploring the economic consequences of peace. The first appeared in the January issue. Mr. Chase is...
...In 1941 the Pentagon developed plans to win a war against Germany and Japan, and the War Production Board followed with large-scale plans to shift American industry from butter to guns...
...The technological imperative has us over a barrel...
...Such a plan, it is encouraging to learn, is less formidable than the war plans demanded in 1941...
...a great many companies must be saved from bankruptcy that might result from cancellation of orders...
...But if he uses it to pay off the mortgage and some of his installment debt (now at an historic high), the effect on unemployment will be small...
...What brackets should be cut the most, and what luxury taxes, if any, rebated...
...New jobs will have to be found for the millions released from the armed forces and armaments production...
...Which will he do...
...This plan will require the best brains in the country—statesmen, social scientists, natural scientists, educators, lawyers, businessmen, labor leaders...
...It must be remembered that these also included the allocation of firepower and materials all over the world...
...All kinds of new arrangements will have to be concluded with the United Nations, NATO, our allies, our late cold war enemies...
...Such a crash would be disastrous for us, for our allies, and for the cause of the open society...
...Insofar as he spends this dividend for consumer goods unemployed men will find new jobs...
...Chase is one of the nation's foremost social analysts, and has served as expert consultant to management, labor, and the federal government...
...f Increased economic and technical aid to underdeveloped countries...
...Supplies had to be not only allocated to allies, but denied to enemies, through a process called "preclusive buying...
...IThe plan we now need is the reverse: how to shift from bombs to buttery It is equally important and somewnat less complicated...
...A secure disarmament agreement by 1962, say, or 1965, may not be inevitable, but unless an agreement comes along in due course, a nuclear war is probably inevitable...
...mountains of raw materials must be reallocated...
...Competent investigators—say Rensis Likert's opinion survey team at the University of...
...It will demand plenty of generalists, people who do not let their specialist training distort the overall view...
...A carefully designed, well-staffed Peace Production Board will have to be set up, with perhaps only advisory powers at the beginning...
...P LANNING has been defined as "intelligent cooperation with the inevitable...
...How can our open society meet it without surrendering too much advantage to the closed societies of the East, where the transition will be relatively smooth...
...either a warless world or no world at all...
...Let us assume that $50 billion annually will no longer be spent for armies and armaments, the equivalent, say, of eight million jobs...
...It can be provided with teeth later, as plans become clarified...
...Temporary help to the unemployed will be in the nature of terminal pay and will present no particular problem...
...The tax cut, however, will require careful planning...
...f As an end in itself, planning is meaningless...
...It would present the uncommitted peoples a devastating propaganda picture, in sharp contrast to that of Russia moving smoothly into peacetime production...
...by STUART CHASE This is the second of a series of two articles exploring the economic consequences of peace...
...It is no small task to prepare to live on a planet from which war has been banished, hopefully forever...
...China was our ally then, as were the British, French, and Dutch empires, together with Canada, most of Latin America, and Australia...
...The plan now needed will present problems less comprehensive perhaps, but more difficult psychologically, because the motive for solving them may seem less urgent...
...What must be done to get ready for the day when peace breaks out...
...Increased outlays for various public services which now suffer from acute starvation...
...The average taxpayer, experts agree, should receive a handsome dividend when peace breaks out...
...Unless this manpower is put to work elsewhere, unemployment, including the normal "frictional" total of upwards of two million, may be expected to rise to more than 10 million, enough to threaten a major depression...
...One must always ask: planning for what?^ President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the famous "hundred days" of 1933, developed some striking plans to restore confidence and prosperity...
...with underdeveloped countries, world banking agencies, and world trade...
...A substantial tax cut...
...He is the author of many books, including Goals for America, The Economy of Abundance, Idle Money, Idle Men, and, soon to be published, Program for Americans.—THE EDITORS...
...To obviate such a debacle, we shall have to take at least four steps—not necessarily in this order: f Temporary payments to the unemployed during the period of transfer, especially to men demobilized from the armed services...
Vol. 24 • February 1960 • No. 2
