I see this argument come up a lot, I'd like to point out 2 points.

1) Wealth wasn't created during WW2, almost all of the increased production went to things like bombs and tanks and bullets, these things don't provide a real increase in quality of life this is one of the main points in 1984, people need to be kept busy, but Quality of Life can't increase.

2) The postwar boom was largely a result of everyone except America being unable to really produce because their economy and workforce was shattered. When you suddenly have 66% percent of the world only able to purchase from you, that's a lot of demand that you can then serve.

Plus it was an unprecedented investment in labor. An entire generation of young men were either killed or maimed, or they received job training and the offer of a free college degree. Suddenly you have an exceedingly employable workforce. And, on top of that, employing women became acceptable too, all creating a situation in which supply expanded massively.

This is a great point. Not to mention the world owed the US a bunch of money due to the Lend Lease Act.

https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/october-23/#:~:tex....

Just for clarity, how are you defining "Wealth" here? I tend to think of knowledge and skills as a form of Wealth, but it's reasonable for that to be debated; especially if all you're measuring is relative positions in a commodities market.

Either way, I think it's possible to argue that the US did generate Wealth in WW2, in the sense that it developed new technologies and knowledge that were eventually shared worldwide (I'm thinking mass production of materials like plastics, antibiotics, better research on nutrition, etc, statistical engineering techniques which eventually helped build up the Japanese auto industry), and that it trained a large portion of its population via the G.I. Bill and women working in factories, etc.

(None of this is to belittle all the damage done by the bombs, etc, and the US did have a massive advantage in non having it's production capacity wrecked like Europe, Russia and Japan. The broken window fallacy is a real thing)