Government and the Economy since World War II

When the war ended in the late summer of 1945, the United States entered a new era in its economic and political history. During the preceding sixteen years, the American people had endured first twelve years of economic depression, then four years of wartime economic privation and regimentation. Those sixteen years had composed a seemingly endless era of national emergency, to which governments at all levels, but most strikingly the federal government, had responded in unprecedented ways. Consequently, as the postwar era began, the size, scope, and power of governments in the United States greatly exceeded their magnitudes in the "good old days " before the onset on the depression. Although some of the emergency measures had already been terminated or soon would be, many persisted, sometimes under a new name or lodged in a different agency. In countless ways, an era of permanent Big Government had arrived. Nowhere was the role of government magnified more than in international affairs. Traditionally, the United States had pursued a relatively modest foreign policy, complying for the most part with Washington and Jefferson's advice to steer clear of entangling alliances and, especially, of the endless quarrels among the great European powers