I'm not sure about the "pay fors" you're talking about, but I believe your sentiment is correct-- and effectively, that $2T came out of the economy via the hidd

I'm not sure about the "pay fors" you're talking about, but I believe your sentiment is correct-- and effectively, that $2T came out of the economy via the hidden tax of inflation. While people would be mad to see the $2T in direct taxation (what you called "Absolutely insane") they do not realize it when it is done via inflation. (Eg: your gas prices, food prices, everything else is higher, because the government just printed the money to spend on the war, increasing the debt and devaluing the dollar.) From The Economic Consequences of the Peace: “Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.” John Maynard Keynes