An addendum to this is that the government forced the companies to do this because the feds passed the insane 1942 Stabilization Act putting limits on wage hike capabilities of firms.
The problem is that we have good economists who say: here are the facts and history of what your choices will do and bad economists who say: if you have x, y, z, and the planets of Saturn and Uranus in alignment, you may be able to affect the economy to the way you wish despite all of the historical evidence to the contrary. The bad economists are hired into administrations to justify politically expedient proposals.
I mean the US was in a fully mobilized war at that point. I don't think the government was looking at long term consequences but at winning the war and surviving
The problem is that we have good economists who say: here are the facts and history of what your choices will do and bad economists who say: if you have x, y, z, and the planets of Saturn and Uranus in alignment, you may be able to affect the economy to the way you wish despite all of the historical evidence to the contrary. The bad economists are hired into administrations to justify politically expedient proposals.