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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8797027" data-attributes="member: 177">So, I'm going to burst a little bubble here.At the height of WWII, the US produced about 80 million metric tons of steel. [spoiler="citation - Wikipedia"] (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_iron_and_steel_industry_in_the_United_States#/media/File:USGS_Iron-Steel_1900-2014.png" target="_blank">History of the iron and steel industry in the United States - Wikipedia</a>  The graph stops at 2014 because that's as far as data went when it was made, not because our production plummeted to zero)  But, yeah, or peak steel production wasn't in the war - it was in the 1970s.[/spoiler]Wanna guess how much steel the US produced in 2021?  About 80 million metric tons - with capacity to do about 100 million.[spoiler="citation - Congressional report on US steel production"] (<a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47107" target="_blank">https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47107</a>)[/spoiler]The US capacity to produce steel as a portion of overall world production has dropped.  But absolute production capacity is at WWII levels currently!  We have maintained (well, gained and lost) capacity - other nations have increased theirs.The real way we managed so much wartime production wasn't so much in outright steel production as it was in strict rationing.  As an example, in 1941, in the US, we produced about 3 million consumer automobiles.  During the war, apparently that number dropped to... 139.  We basically completely halted new car production.Well, your previous reply was based on an erroneous premise.  We haven't actually lost capacity.Don't bet on that.  The issue with the Vietnam War was that the American public saw little point in it, while the government pursued it.  This has been similar for most wars since that time.  But then, nobody's actually tried to take control of Europe in a full offensive either.A bit of cherrypicking of a unique case there.  We cannot get into the politics of it, but under a different administration, it could have gone quite differently.So, wait a minute - you say we have become less resilient since WWII.... but use an example that starts before WWII?  That doesn't say what you think it does.</blockquote>

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