WAR ECONOMY: Anatomy of Suffering

Our national standard of living must be reduced to the level which prevailed in 1932.—Leon Henderson.

As for the inconveniences, discomforts and hardships that you and I will have to endure—why, we haven't even got to the foothills yet. . . . We'll do without a lot of things until it really hurts every single one of us.—Don Nelson.

Our civilian economy is fast going on a minimum subsistence standard.—Bill Batt.

In such words, and many more, too many people have been telling too many other people that the U.S. citizen is going to have to "suffer." Everyone tells him that something nebulous and horrible is going to hit him any minute, exhorts him to be ready and brave. The average citizen, in fact, is beginning to feel that it is hardly decent for him not to "suffer." But what does this nebulous "suffering" amount to?

Leon Henderson has defined it in dollars. The U.S. this year, he says, will have at least $15,000,000,000 more income to spend for $9,000,000,000 less goods and services than it bought last year. Next year the spread will be even bigger. That is indeed inflationary, but is it suffering? Something like two-thirds of the $9 billion cut just means that there will be practically no new consumer durable goods to buy: no automobiles, upon which the U.S. last year lavished $4 billion; no refrigerators ($550.000.000); no radios ($520,000,000), etc. But this is akin to "deferred maintenance." The U.S. will have to get along with its old cars; more people will have to wear their old clothes until they get a bit threadbare. Once the present enormous inventories of new goods are sold out, people won't be able to raise their standard of living with all sorts of new household gadgets. But, except where shipping bottlenecks or military conquest have restricted seaborne supplies (like rubber), nothing has happened yet to indicate any cut worth speaking of in goods for daily (or nondurable) consumption. There is talk of rationing in a total of 15 items, but none of the added rationing will bring real hardship. In fact, far from going back to 1932, the U.S. will have on balance more goods to enjoy in the year of "suffering" 1943 than it had in riotous 1929. Specifically:

The U.S. Will Be Fed. It has, and will have, more wheat than it knows what to do with (TIME, June 22), more vegetables, more meat and milk and fruit than it has ever had before. Despite Lend-Lease, the Agriculture Department of late has been so bothered with more milk, cheese and eggs than it had dared to hope for, for example, that it is urging people to eat more abundantly. The U.S. will have less sugar, coffee, tea, cocoa, tapioca, bananas and other imported foods to which it has become attached; and domestic transportation troubles may mean doing without some delicacies from distant states. But from the standpoint of a balanced diet the U.S. will be as well fed in 1943—if not better—than ever before.