Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/194

172 lations over-estimated, then 30.2 billion dollars for the direct cost of the war, then 17.8 billion dollars debit balance of the rest of the world to us, and if then we write down the remainder to terms of 1913 dollars and write off some more for what we have put into constructions now useless we shall come pretty near to what I have already shown by inventory and we shall come still nearer if allowance be made, as I have made it, for the deterioration that we suffered in the property that we possessed before the war. The result could not indeed be otherwise. With no substantial increase in the production of raw materials and with no improvement but rather an impairment of our labor power in manufacturing and handling those materials we could not engage in a terrific war, with all of its wastes, and grow rich at the same time. What we really did was apply our earnings to warfare and neglect the upkeep of our former property in the meanwhile. Any figuring to the contrary is merely an illusion of inflation. It will be clear to anybody that the wealth of the United States could be caused to appear to have increased by writing up values, but it is equally clear that this would not add anything to the number of houses or repair the deterioration of the railways. It may be remarked in this connection that the writing up of real estate values for taxation purposes is going to produce a condition that will plague us.

Equally fallacious is the idea that the war increased prosperity and raised the scale of living. Even so