Guns And Butter

As Orrin Judd points from time to time, after World War II, via the Marshall Plan, America put Europe “out of our misery“:

The point at which Europe could have been saved was immediately after WWII, when it couldn’t afford its cradle-to-grave welfare systems and faced a threat from the USSR. But America–to what degree consciously is a subject for argument–chose to enervate Europe instead, sending Marshall Plan money to prop up their socialist states and taking over their defense. In effect, after getting drawn into three European wars we put them out of our misery.

And in that regard, it continues to pay big dividends to this day!