The respirations were exploited however much of a burden they actually were I'm not sure. The one thing about Keynes I recall strongly disagreeing with was that the depression ended for the US at the start of WWII, it always seemed to be that while unemployment dropped of course, the standard of living continued through the war years just rationing was now seen as for a good cause.
Had WW2 not happened, would the US have become prosperous or perhaps states would have seceeded?
I tend to agree that hardship for American families did not fully end until the end of WWII.
The idea that WWII lifted the U.S. from the depths of depression is somewhat due to revisionist history. The actual course of recovery began with an open letter to FDR by J.M. Keynes in 1933 published in the NYT at the suggestion of Felix Frankfurter. This was followed by a face to face meeting of Keynes and FDR the next year. It was Keynes influence on FDR that convinced him to abandon classical economics and embark on a path toward recovery that involved vast government expenditure into the private sector in an application of what has become known as Keynesian economics. There were some false starts, and FDR had difficulty getting the Congress on board, but by 1938 the economy was on the path to full recovery.
One could argue, as you may be, that entry into the war, three years later, in December of 1941 actually delayed completion of the path toward full recovery. At least during the war years there was no shortage of jobs. The U.S. had the lowest unemployment on record during WWII.
see, for example:
https://rooseveltinstitute.org/how-fdr-learned-stop-worrying-and-love-keynesian-economics/
A few excerpts:
As European leaders watch their austerity measures generate economic setbacks and pain at the polls, they’re re-learning a lesson that FDR also learned the hard way: Balancing a budget during an economic crisis might sound like a nice idea in theory, but the real-life consequences are a killer. While FDR is today remembered as a president who embraced Keynesian economics with programs like the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps that helped lead America out of the Great Depression, he started out as something of a deficit hawk.
...
Duly chastened by the painful effects of his attempt at balancing the budget, FDR was persuaded to embrace the theories of John Maynard Keynes and called for more deficit spending beginning in 1938 and continuing throughout World War II. His change of heart culminated in his famous speech calling for an Economic Bill of Rights in 1944, in which he said, “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”
see especially: Keynes on the Sequencing of Economic Policy: Recovery and Reform in 1933Sebastian Edwards NBER Working Paper No. 24367March 2018JEL No. B21,B22,B26,B27,E31,F31,N12,N22
Excerpts from S. Edwards' paper:
On September 24 1933, Felix Frankfurter, the prominent Harvard law professor, sailed in the steamer Britannic to London. According to The New York Times, the trip had a double purpose: on the one hand Frankfurter was to be the Eastman Professor at Oxford, and on the other he was “on an unofficial presidential mission, assisting the Chief Executive [President Franklin Delano Roosevelt] in keeping abreast of affairs, particularly financial matters all over the world.”1During his year-long stay in the United Kingdom, Frankfurter met all sorts of people, gave a number of lectures, and cemented friendships with some of the most influential intellectuals of the time, including Isaiah Berlin and John Maynard Keynes. On December 6 1933, Frankfurter went to Cambridge, where he was a guest of Keynes for King’s Founder’s Feast. During the visit the conversation touched on many topics, including the economic experiments undertaken by the new U.S. administration.2 A few days later the Harvard professor wrote to Keynes and suggested that he [pen] an article for a U.S. newspaper giving his opinion about President Roosevelt’s economic policies. In particular, he wanted Keynes to support an expansion of public works.
...
On December 31 1933, The New York Times published an open letter from John Maynard Keynes to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In it Keynes encouraged FDR to expand public works through government borrowing. He also criticized FDR’s exchange rate policy, and argued that there was a need for lower long-term interest rates. But perhaps the most interesting feature of this letter is that Keynes made comments on the sequencing and speed of economic policies. He argued that “recovery”policies should precede “reform” measures."
