Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran an insane headline. It asked a question that should never be asked in a civilized (educated! historically literate!) society:
Is war good for the economy?
The answer is definitely “no” but the fact that someone thought this story passed muster is crazy.
This idea (that destruction can create wealth) has been floating around for decades. You hear it every time politicians start rattling sabers. They tell us that production will increase, jobs will be created, spending will surge, and the economy will boom.
No matter your age, you’ve likely heard these arguments before. It’s less likely, however, that you’ve heard that they trace back—directly or indirectly—to one man.
John Maynard Keynes.
Keynes is one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. His ideas reshaped how governments think about spending, deficits, and economic policy.
He also happens to be, in my opinion, one of the worst people to ever live.
Not only did his ideas about money and government do irreparable damage to the field of economics and the world at large, but his journals and personal history (he was a meticulous record keeper) show that, had their timelines overlapped, he would have definitely been a close friend to Jeffrey Epstein.
(I’ll spare the details, but would encourage you to go looking for yourself. Be warned—it’s pretty bad.)
Keynes the economist believed that economic downturns could be solved through massive government spending. He believed that if people weren’t buying enough goods, the government could simply step in and spend the money instead.
He even argued that wasteful spending could, when absolutely necessary, stimulate economic activity. One (in) famous example attributed to Keynes is that governments could bury bottles full of money in abandoned coal mines and have people dig them up again.
This, from his General Theory of Money (1936):
If that logic sounds bizarre, it’s because it is. But it’s also the intellectual soil from which the “war is good for the economy” argument grows.
I mean, what is war if not the most massive government spending program imaginable?
Weapons manufacturing. Military contracts. New supply chains. Reconstruction.
From a narrow accounting perspective, it all looks like economic activity.
But that’s where one of the most important lessons in economics comes in—a lesson that predates Keynes by nearly a century.
It comes from the great French economist Frédéric Bastiat.
Bastiat called it the broken window fallacy, or the parable of the broken window:
Imagine a boy throws a rock through a baker’s shop window. The crowd gathers and someone says, “Well, at least this will create work for the glazier.”
The glazier gets paid, the window is replaced, and money changes hands. On the surface, it looks like economic activity has been created.
But what you don’t see is what the baker would have done with that money if the window hadn’t been broken.
Maybe he would have bought a new pair of shoes. Maybe he would have expanded his shop. Maybe he would have hired another worker.
The broken window didn’t create wealth; it destroyed wealth and merely redirected resources toward repairing the damage that would have been used for something the baker actually needed or wanted.
War operates on exactly the same principle—just on a scale so large that it blinds people to reality.
Bombing a city does not create prosperity because someone later rebuilds it.
Destroying factories does not make a nation richer because new ones must be constructed.
Sending millions of young men and women to fight and die does not make a country more prosperous.
It does the opposite.
War is the most catastrophic broken window in human history, yet somehow, generation after generation, the same argument keeps resurfacing.
And it’s not an accident; it’s by design. Because bad ideas survive when they are useful to powerful people.
Keynesian economics gives governments intellectual cover to spend endlessly, borrow endlessly, and intervene endlessly. It tells politicians that destruction can be good so long as it increases spending.
Once you start thinking that way, it becomes very easy to justify almost anything.
Even war.
The irony is that Bastiat warned about this kind of thinking long before Keynes ever wrote a word. In fact, one of his most powerful essays—The Law—was written specifically to explain how governments often use the law itself to take from some people for the benefit of others.
This is at the heart of the lessons we teach kids in the very first Tuttle Twins book we ever published: Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law.
It’s based on Bastiat’s work, and helps kids understand something most adults never learn:
When government uses force to redistribute wealth or manipulate the economy, the results are rarely what people expect. Usually, they’re disastrous.
Which brings us back to that WSJ headline.
Is war good for the economy?
The answer isn’t complicated. It’s not “sometimes.” It’s not “in certain circumstances.”
It’s hell no.
Not ever.
War only destroys. It destroys lives, families, cities, and wealth. The idea that it somehow produces prosperity only makes sense if you ignore the destruction and focus only on the spending that follows it. Which is, frankly, psychotic.
It’s just the broken window fallacy dressed up in political language, and it’s exactly the kind of economic distortion we want to help the next generation understand and reject.
If kids learn early how incentives work, how wealth is actually created, and why bad ideas persist in politics, they’ll be far less likely to fall for arguments like this later in life. It’s the whole reason we created the Tuttle Twins books in the first place.
And it all started with Bastiat.
Once you understand the broken window fallacy, you’ll never look at arguments like “war is good for the economy” the same way again.
(And once you learn about John Maynard Keynes, you’ll understand why politicians and the powerful elite love him so much.)
If you don’t already have Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law in your home library, it’s the place to start. Bonus, Bastiat’s The Law (we sell it for only $1) is the perfect quick read for parents who are learning about all of this right alongside their kids!
(If you’re ready to jump all the way in, we have a starter pack that builds the perfect foundation for any home library!)
The wealthy and powerful elite have always bought the present with the future peace and prosperity of the rising generation.
I’ve dedicated my life trying to stop them, and parents like you are the key to it all.
— Connor
