On The Influence Of American Centralized Economy During The World War Ⅰ

In order to promote the war economics American government established a nation—controled economic system—Centralized Economy.This system seemed to be an American governments'temporary measure for World War I,but the basis of such a system bagan to form long before the World War I.The progressive ideas of the 19th century provided theoretical foundation for Federal Government's intervene in econimics and the economic institutions and laws involved in econimics during the process of government's anti-monopoly polocy provided the lessons for the implementation of Centralized Economy.As war promotion system,the Centralized Economy was formed under the double protection of both economic system and law system and it had military significance in many perspectives,including a more scientific system of rear service and a more powerful war-promotion system.In one respect,the Centralized Economy during the war time was the first practise of the idea of"General Stragety"in American military history. It made a solid foundation for nation-wided military promotion system and it also was an important part of the oversea military system. In another respect, as an economic mangement system, the Centralized Economy has much significance in economics such as tax policy, price policy and labour policy during war time. In orderr to meet the ever increasing demand of military expenditure, American government took three revenues to increase the nation's income such as tax increasing, the distribution of government bonds and the creation of currency. These three measures has significant influence on American economy; firstly, the tax increasing policy was beneficial to ordinary people because of the wealth re-assignment although it caused misunderstanding of some people; secondly, the government bonds stirred up a patriotic movement; thirdly, American government realized the advantages of increasing tax income in government's revenue and it became a part of the nation's revenue system. During this period of time, high-income-tax was formed. The establishment of American federal reserve system made the government have more active mode of currency creation. During the process of federal's buying of government's bonds, the important public market operation of currency policy was discovered, it became the usual method of readjusting currency distribution and has a lot of influence on economic operation. And the system of centralized economy, the control of price by government had much importance in two respects: meeting the demands of war supply and stablizing the price so as to ensure steady development of national economy. And the guidance of such a system, a special price control system called Bulklink Advance was formed in America. One important feature of labour policy is the union with the workers during the World War I which ensured the rights of the workers and avoided the strike by workers. All these created a suitable social environment for smooth war promotion. After World War I, the fast development of American economy was based on the war economics and it is the centralized economy that brings the prosperity of economy. American government was the chief promotor of the Centralized Economy during the war time and it used price-lever to raise the efficiency of economic operation to stabilize the price so that people came to know the advantage of governement's intervine in economy. American economy went through such process of depression-to-prosperity-to-depression after World War I and this had a close relation with the Centralized Economy. The heavy depression was the direct result of the abandonment of government's involvement policy. The significance of centralized economy lies not only in providing resources of the policy-making for the new government in1930's but also in providing a model for later American economy.