Past mobilization proves the GND is feasible/within our grasp

(Brad, Climate activist/author, , 3-3)

To match a WWII-level mobilization today, US federal spending would reach somewhere between $30 trillion to $80 trillion a year. The nation’s mobilization for World War II saw federal spending grow from 10 percent of GDP (which represented a doubling from pre-Great Depression spending) to over 40 percent by 1945, vastly higher than federal outlays since. Source: FRED Economic Data, Federal Spending as Percent of GDP. One of the most common attacks against any kind of federal investment in the health of its citizenry is the specter of “soaring deficits.” Again, if we look to the highly successful example of the New Deal and World War II, we can see that we have little to worry about. (There’s also the point that budgetary deficits are meaningless when the alternative to spending is extinction.) The federal deficit reached 25 percent of GDP at the peak of the WWII-spending boom, vastly higher than today’s deficits. Source: FRED Economic Data, Federal Surplus as Percent of GDP. Note: As total US GDP grew dramatically thanks to the war mobilization, US federal spending increased not four-fold from 1940 to 1945 but seven-fold. The spending ramp-up from the start of the Great Depression to the peak of WWII mobilization is much more dramatic — a twenty-fold increase. That previously unprecedented spending is better understood as investment — the US economy tripled in size from 1929 to 1959. As economic analyst Kimberly Amadeo summarizes, “the New Deal worked.” Remarkably, the US’ historically high percentage of federal spending during World War II would put it at the low end of present-day spending in Europe: Source: OECD Data, general government spending. Following World War II, federal government spending has remained stable at about 20 percent of GDP. (The 2009 stimulus very briefly increased spending to 25 percent of GDP.) The US federal budget is currently about $4 trillion a year. If the federal government increased investment by seven to twenty times — paralleling the ramp-up that got the world out of the Great Depression, beat the Nazis, and made the United States the undisputed superpower of the free world — we would see an annual federal budget of about $30 trillion to $80 trillion a year. We can end global warming pollution and build a just, green economy in ten years with a budget of $50 trillion a year.