June 25, 2011

The Military as a Jobs Program: There are More Efficient Ways to Stimulate the Economy

Ellen Brown writes: "Why is the military’s half of the pie sacrosanct? Wasteful and unnecessary military programs get a pass from legislators because the military is also our largest and most secure jobs program, one that has penetrated into the nooks and crannies of Every Town U.S.A. If it were disbanded, the economy would be crippled by soaring unemployment, plant closures, and bankruptcies."

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. . . . We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people."

–Dwight David Eisenhower, "The Chance for Peace," speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953

In a Wall Street Journal editorial on June 8 bemoaning the failure of the Obama stimulus package, Martin Feldstein wrote:

"Experience shows that the most cost-effective form of temporary fiscal stimulus is direct government spending. The most obvious way to achieve that in 2009 was to repair and replace the military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan that would otherwise have to be done in the future.　But the Obama stimulus had nothing for the Defense Department."

You can’t make this stuff up. The most obvious way to stimulate the economy is to replace military equipment? And the Obama stimulus had nothing for the Defense Department? When veterans’ benefits and other past military costs are factored in, the military now devours half the U.S. budget. If military spending is such a cost-effective stimulus, why have the trillions poured into it in the last decade left the economy reeling?

The military is the nation’s largest and most firmly entrenched entitlement program, one that takes half of every tax dollar. Even if "national security" is considered our number one priority (a dubious choice when the real unemployment rate is over 16%), estimates are that the military budget could be cut in half or more and we would still have the most powerful military machine in the world. Our enemies (if any) are now "terrorists," not countries; and what is needed to contain them (if anything) is local policing, not global warfare. Much of our military hardware is just good for "shock and awe," not needed for any "real and present danger."

Military spending is the very essence of "built-in obsolescence": it turns out products that are designed to blow up. The military is not subject to ordinary market principles but works on a "cost-plus" basis, with producers reimbursed for whatever they have spent plus a guaranteed profit. Gone are the usual competitive restraints that keep capitalist corporations "lean and mean." Private contractors hired by the government on no-bid contracts can be as wasteful and inefficient as they like and still make a tidy profit. Yet legislators looking to slash wasteful "entitlements" persist in overlooking this obvious elephant in the room.

The reason massive military spending is considered the most "obvious" way to produce a fiscal stimulus is simply that it is the only form of direct government spending that gets a pass from the deficit hawks. The economy is desperate to get money flowing through it, and today only the government is in a position to turn on the spigots; but there is a tourniquet on government spending. That is true for everything but the military, the only program on which the government is allowed to spend seemingly without limit, often even without oversight.

Chalmers Johnson estimated in 2004 that as much as 40% of the Pentagon budget is "black," meaning hidden from public scrutiny. The black budget is so top secret that Congress itself is not allowed to peer in and haggle over the price. Democratic control of the military has broken down. The military is being used for purposes that even Congress is not allowed to know, much less vote on. The U.S. is no longer a constitutional republic but is a national security state. Foreign policy is determined behind closed doors by powerful private interests that use our military presence abroad to secure their access to cheap labor, markets and resources. At least, we assume that is what is going on. A declared objective of U.S. military policy is "full spectrum dominance." That could well mean dominance over the American people along with everyone else.

Why is the military’s half of the pie sacrosanct? Wasteful and unnecessary military programs get a pass from legislators because the military is also our largest and most secure jobs program, one that has penetrated into the nooks and crannies of Every Town U.S.A. If it were disbanded, the economy would be crippled by soaring unemployment, plant closures, and bankruptcies. Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power, writes:

"Most politicians understand . . . that weapons production is currently the number one industrial export product of the U.S. They know that major industrial job creation is largely coming from the Pentagon. Thus most politicians, from both parties, want to continue to support the military industrial complex gravy train for their communities."

That explains why the country seems to be permanently at war. If we had peace, the war machine would be out of a job. Every year since World War II, the U.S. has been at war somewhere. It has been said that if we didn’t have a war to fight, we would have to create one just to keep the war business going. We have a military empire of over 800 bases around the world. What is to become of them when the lion lies down with the lamb and peace reigns everywhere?"

Read full article here.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, author, and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how the power to create money has been usurped from the people, and how we can get it back. Her websites are http://webofdebt.com and http://ellenbrown.com.