As former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich contends, our government's only real policy to counter a rising unemployment rate is to create job openings in the military. Yes, the military is our biggest jobs program within the Obama administration. Nice, huh? I can't think of a better way to feed the corpo-militarist addiction to on-going war and unending profits.
Read what Professor Reich thinks about our ballooning DoD budget, and when including Homeland Security, intelligence, and other quasi-military functions, comes to about $950 billion for the next fiscal year. Tell me, how come the Teabaggers never piss-and-moan about this -- the largest contributor to our deficit each and every year?
Read what Professor Reich thinks about our ballooning DoD budget, and when including Homeland Security, intelligence, and other quasi-military functions, comes to about $950 billion for the next fiscal year. Tell me, how come the Teabaggers never piss-and-moan about this -- the largest contributor to our deficit each and every year?
From robertreich.org
America's Biggest Jobs Program -- the U.S. Military
by Robert Reich
America’s biggest — and only major — jobs program is the U.S. military.
Over 1,400,000 Americans are now on active duty; another 833,000 are in the reserves, many full time. Another 1,600,000 Americans work in companies that supply the military with everything from weapons to utensils. (I’m not even including all the foreign contractors employing non-US citizens.)
If we didn’t have this giant military jobs program, the U.S. unemployment rate would be over 11.5 percent today instead of 9.5 percent.
And without our military jobs program personal incomes would be dropping faster. The Commerce Department reported Monday the only major metro areas where both net earnings and personal incomes rose last year were San Antonio, Texas, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. — because all three have high concentrations of military and federal jobs.
This isn’t an argument for more military spending. Just the opposite. Having a giant undercover military jobs program is an insane way to keep Americans employed. It creates jobs we don’t need but we keep anyway because there’s no honest alternative. We don’t have an overt jobs program based on what’s really needed. (Read the rest by clicking here.)
2 comments:
the best thing about bombs and bullets are these are disposable products... you don't get to use them twice. so drop a bomb, shoot a bullet... you provide more work for the manufacturer plus you get the added benefit of prividing work for the undertakers, ambulance drivers, medical staff, contractors to repair the damage, etc... so bombs and bullets provide lots of jobs. What we arguably need is a bigger shooting war...perhaps with Iran.
Anonymous, I'm guessing that you're either being supremely sarcastic, at best, or in the worst case being completely mendacious. I'll assume the former.
If the latter, your understanding of basic economic principles, such as aggregate demand and multiplier effect, is sorely lacking.
Regarding Iran, let's hope not. Beyond the fact that another preemptive war would be immoral and unjustified, it could very well be one that would escalate into World War III. But, I'm sure the international banking cartel would love that.
Nevertheless, thanks for your comment.
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