You contradict yourself from one sentence to the next. Debt being a lower % of GDP is not the same as reducing debt. It means only that the debt increases less than GDP increased.

Saying “LBJ reduced the debt because debt as a % of GDP got lower” is like saying that you “reduced your credit card debt” every time you get a salary increase. No, you decreased your debt-to-income ratio, not your debt. To reduce your debt you would have to pay more on your debts in a year than your new borrowing. LBJ, in other words would have had to be running surpluses. That never happened from 1960 – 1968. Only in 1969 was there a surplus.

Lyndon Johnson made the decision in 1963, after he became president, to fight the war in Vietnam and, at the same time, to pass the legislation that keeps us in deficit spending,

But LBJ reduced the national debt. See here: Debt as a % of the GDP .

They way yo are talking, Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, and Clinton should be your heros. But I suspect they are not. Why?

There is an enormous, profound difference between WWII funding and the present.
War bonds then were bought by American individuals to a substantial extent. The Federal government’s financial obligations were modest then: Social Security was in its infancy, and the other massive entitlements that now compose a huge majority of the Federal budget did not then exist (Medicare, Medicaid, HUD and its housing programs, tax credits to the poor, various anti-poverty programs, etc.)

Obama raised the national debt more than all prior presidents combined, from $8 trillion to $16 trillion. Most of that was not, repeat, not spent on our military. Obama seriously downsized all military services. We are unable now to engage in two regional conflicts simultaneously as a result. The Navy has fewer ships than in the 1930s; a large part of Air Force planes are in maintenance, not airworthy.

Since LBJ the US has spent >$20 trillion on the “war against poverty”, yet the % that is officially in poverty is unchanged.

The entitlement programs will march on without legislative modification; it will take new laws! What remains is the so-called “discretionary” sector of the federal budget, and that includes all defense spending. As all interest rates rise courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank, Federal interest payments will make increases in other discretionary categories such as Defense impossible.

The US cannot default on debt per the Constitution, so we have a nation-eating problem on our hands.
BTW, the US does not really ‘borrow’ money in the usual sense. The Federal Reserve prints money which it lends to the US Treasury. Keystrokes! Instant money!

The difference is economics, a discipline that might seem obscure to some. During the Second World War, there was a terrible risk of inflation. Many items that would be normally available for sale were rationed. Lots of people who had been mired in the Depression (We can talk about Roosevelt’s role another time), and now had jobs and a pretty good income but there was not much to buy.

I can remember my parents using “red points,” ration coupons for meat. The sale of war bonds soaked up a lot of money that might have gone to feed inflation. It was a patriotic thing to do but it was also making it obvious to people that we were borrowing money to fight the war.

Lyndon Johnson made the decision in 1963, after he became president, to fight the war in Vietnam and, at the same time, to pass the legislation that keeps us in deficit spending, The Great Society. At the time, it was referred to as avoiding the decision between “guns and butter” by doing both. Johnson was the worst president in our history and we live with the consequences of his mistakes and will for decades.

I expect it will end in some sort of bankruptcy of the country. Obama doubled the national debt by doing some similar things.

Roosevelt introduced his “Four Freedoms” at the end of his annual speech to Congress (what we now call the State of the Union Address) on January 6, 1941. That was 11 months before Pearl Harbor. He was trying to prepare the American public for war long before Pearl Harbor. Rockwell painted his famous paintings in 1942, after Pearl Harbor. The paintings were published in the Saturday Evening Post in early 1943, and subsequently used to sell war bonds.

Re: Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms and Rockwell’s famous paintings, see this:

https://rockwellfourfreedoms.org/

My wife and I saw this traveling exhibit at The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, MI last month. It’s outstanding.

Yes, freedom FROM want and fear are not the same as freedom OF worship and speech. However, at the time (early 1940s) the context was different. Roosevelt was explaining to the public why the United States needed to be involved in World War II. He was explaining what we needed to fight for. It took a lot of explaining. Rockwell’s paintings (which were Rockwell’s own initiative) were part of the effort to sell Roosevelt’s ideas.

Rockwell’s freedom of speech painting was the only one of the four paintings to be based on an actual incident – a Vermont town meeting that Rockwell witnessed. One of Rockwell’s neighbors had a viewpiont that no one else in the room supported. Yet he was allowed to speak his mind, and everyone else listened respectfully. Alas, Vermont (my state) is at risk of becoming a very different place today, if the Charles Murray incident at Middlebury College in March 2017 becomes the norm.

Again I am thankful for Neo and her “salon” here, practicing respectful free speech in a world that is becoming increasingly intolerant, and providing a platform for viewpoints that are under increasing attack but are needed more than ever.

It is amazing to me that much of the WWII funding was accomplished through voluntary war bonds. Imagine how that would go today.

Wait…all government bonds are “voluntary”, to the person buying the debt. Is there anything that distinguishes war bonds from other forms of deficit spending.

I’m pretty sure people would prefer that today to the alternatives: raising taxes or cutting spending. I mean we’re deficit spending right now to the tune of 1 trillion bucks a year for no reason whatsoever…no war, no recession, no liquidity trap.

So I assume we must have gone deficit spending during the Iraq and Afghan wars. Maybe there were no “war bonds” per se, but what’s the difference? Either way, we borrow money to cover our costs.

And in particular, thanks to Neo for this stimulating and convivial on-line gathering place. And to her commentariat for their contributions toward making it so. :>)))