Economic planning

Economic planning is a term used to describe the long term plans of an incumbant government to co-ordinate and develop the economy. Economic planning is commonly a feature of big government as it usually involves increased spending on things such as public work schemes and government programmes.

Given the economic woes due to the collapse of international trade on a vast scale in the early 1930s caused by tariff restrictions severally among nation states, economic planning became quite fashionable as a solution among what became the belligent powers of World War II.

Economic planning can include:

• Discussing the long term future of economic growth, and ways of achieving said growth.
• Meeting social partners such as trade Union leaders to co-ordinate government planning in relation to these partners.
• Organising committees to create reports and offer reccomendations for future economic expansion.

Critics, who generally tend to be pro Free-market argue that the only economic planning that government should engage in is providing a framework for the economy to operate, such as sufficient infrastructure and the maintenance of law and order

World War II

On the economic side of the war there was the formidable task of producing the mountains of materials necessary for the war. That was done by the American industry. This was an industry of epic proportions that had been created and developed long before the New Deal ever came into existence. And it was, in fact, that very industry upon which all the engines of scorn and demonization of the New Deal had been focused, and which appointees of President Franklin Roosevelt like Rex Tugwell and Henry Wallace and their underlings wanted to liquidate. This industry was operated by financiers and administrative leaders who had developed the resources of the nation, who had invented and perfected the technical processes, and who had built the factories and machines which turned out guns, planes, tanks, cars, ships, arms, munitions, food and all the accouterments and necessities of war. They were told what was wanted and they supplied it. New Dealers such as Rex Tugwell, Harry Hopkins, Leon Henderson and Henry Wallace had nothing to do with this production. It was the hated business man whom New Dealers spent years demonizing who produced what was necessary to win the war.

There were in truth very little war profits for honest men because the government during the war drained away in drastic taxes most of the profits.