Was there prosperity in US after World War 2?

Answer 1

Not immediately. The first year or two right after the war was over were years of dislocation. Returning discharged servicemen were jokingly said to be members of the "52-20" club. They were given $20 per week unemployment benefits for fifty-two weeks. All construction materials went to the military during the war, so there were no new houses built during the war. All civilian factories had been converted over to war production, which had meant there were no new consumer goods to buy while the war was going on - no new washing machines, no new cars were produced between 1942-46. Now the war contracts for these factories were canceled and the workers were laid off while the factories retooled to go back to making civilian items. Shipyards stopped right in the middle of building ships and left them sitting half-finished on the ways.

But, many returning servicemen had saved their money. Many war-workers had done the same - they were working ninety hours a week in many cases (incredible overtime fat paychecks) and so had no time to spend money and there was nothing to spend it on anyway. Other civilians had invested in war bonds, the patriotic thing to do. So there was a massive amount of cash burning big holes in peoples' pockets, and finally, at long last, there was about to be something to buy. These people had all grown up in, or lived through, the Great Depression of the 1930s, when nobody had a job or any money. There was a lot of catching up to do.

Returning servicemen had another benefit in the GI Bill - a one-time, no questions asked home loan. Construction had lagged since the 20s as few people could afford a house, and there was an IMMENSE postwar home-building boom, fueled by GI Loans and war workers putting their savings into a new place. Factories of all kinds offered good paying jobs (though Rosie the Riveter was not especially welcome - she was supposed to go home and be a housewife and give her job back to a returned serviceman). The factories cranked out civilian goods of all kinds which were eagerly snapped up. Television came of age by 1948, and America moved inside that year to sit in front of the idiot box and has stayed there since every evening. Factories had to build TVs, and rooftop antennas, and people had to install the antennas on every house.

This postwar prosperity lasted for years, well into the 1960s, before Lyndon Johnson proved what a big, fat idiot he was by trying to have his "Great Society" programs, and fight a stupid war 12,000 miles away, and do ALL of this without raising taxes, which set the US economy on a downward death spiral which we're still riding toward the crash. When Eisenhower was president, in eight years, the Gross Domestic Product and the average family income doubled. DOUBLED. And this was real buying power, not just twice as many inflated dollars each worth half what they had been. We'll never see that again. Its one reason people are nostalgic about the 50s - life genuinely, really got dramatically better for most Americans.