Smedley D Butler: WWI $16 Trillion in Profits
on Saturday, July 18, 2015Smedley D Butler Money Quotation saying World War One earned business trillions and made many business owners wealthy and some billionaires. Smedley D Butler said:
“It has been estimated by statisticians and economists that the war (WWI) yielded $16 Trillion in Profits. That is how the 21,000 Billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16 Trillion in Profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum” — Smedley D Butler
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In this quote, Smedley D Butler is criticizing the vast profits generated from World War 1. He notes that economists and statisticians estimated $16 trillion was made in profits from the war. Butler suggests this is how so many people became billionaires and millionaires.
His point is that while $16 trillion is an enormous amount of money, it was primarily generated through the immense human costs and destruction of war rather than productive economic activity. Butler seems to disapprove of or find fault with the war profiteering that enriched so few while so many suffered from the conflict.
The quote casts the war profits in a negative light and implies the wealth accumulation they brought was unearned or unfairly gained from capitalizing on worldwide violence and carnage.
Birthday: July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940