NATIONAL INCOME: What They Did with the Money

Americans had $6,510,000,000 more cash to spend or save in the first four months of 1942 than they had a year before. This is what they did with it:

> Put 38% of it ($2,850,000,000) into war bonds, compared with about $400,000,000 a year before.

> Paid out $2,600,000,000, for which they got nothing but inflation, in the form of 19% higher prices. Specifically, they paid $16,740,000,000 for goods that would have cost only $14,100,000,000 in 1941.

> Paid off more than $1,100,000,000 worth of old debts, mostly because they were running...

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