Comments on: Unemployment is the real price of war

By: achtung

achtung — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 17:22:54 +0000

There has to be some hidden reasoning behind these three wars going on. Someone very powerful and extremely wealthy that is behind these unnecessary conflicts. Certainly the men fighting these wars have nothing monetarily to gain. so if someone really knows the answer please let me know.
Most of those in this conflict are week end warriors and when they signed up for duty it was to defend this country in national disasters and not to be sent to fight global wars. My heart and prayers go out to these brave young men who were duped.

By: nadie

nadie — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 19:33:19 +0000

The $1.2 trillion was actually pulled from the future (with interest) into the present. But it was money spent in the present economy. Therefore, it actually caused a higher growth rate than we would have had without it. The real issue is that we are probably not better off in the long-run for it. That 2% borrowed growth was bought with lower, slower, or no-growth in the years to come.

By: BowMtnSpirit

BowMtnSpirit — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 19:26:52 +0000

@JamieSamans: It’s been years since I logged onto any of those sites, for lots of reasons. And you are correct about politics. It is of very little value, because what the politicians state has very little, superficially, with what they are actually doing, or actually intend to do.

Keep this up and you’ll join me as one of the non-mainstream fringe thinkers the politicos love to ignore or marginalize. ;o)

By: JamieSamans

JamieSamans — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:29:22 +0000

I’m starting to appreciate why so many educated people withdraw from tracking politics: it’s extremely frustrating and depressing to see the course we’re on and recognize that, as in Animal Farm, it’s impossible to change course because the sheep just keep baying as loud as possible and drowning out any intelligent commentary.

Take this article. It’s very insightful. The comments shared here, on Reuters, are insightful. But bring it up on Yahoo! News, or on FoxNews.com, or at MSNBC, and you’ll just get a bunch of partisan sheep telling us that we need to cut spending or raise taxes or that Obama or Bush (or Carter or Clinton) is to blame.

By: BowMtnSpirit

BowMtnSpirit — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:02:11 +0000

Some of these comments exhibit curiously distorted historical claims and a clearly Keynesian bias. All of that aside, I agree that Easterbrook did fail to address the flow-back effect of the continual purchasing of arms and material from the military-industrial sector. There is no doubt that certain jobs and profits have been realized by arms manufacturers, oil companies, and many others. But at what cost?

As George Orwell presciently informed us, the purpose of war is not to win. The purpose of war is to divert resources away from the citizens. It is therefore “rational” for government to spend its tax revenues on things that break, and to do so perpetually. To do otherwise is to risk empowering the citizenry in a way that is inherently dangerous to those who hold power. A cowed citizenry is a controlled citizenry. Eisenhower also attempted to warn us of this when he left office.

@Dan0 and the others who believe war stimulates the economy, who believe that WWII ended the Great Depression, go back and read your history more carefully. By 1939, by the time Hitler was really shaking things up in Europe, the Great Depression was in the rearview mirror. FDR did that, in the most basic terms, by demonetizing the dollar (severing it from gold in 1933, which amounted to a confiscation of wealth), and then printing those debt obligations (now treated as “lawful money”, although it wasn’t), and pouring that “money” into public works, such as dams and courthouses.

The parallels to the present situation end at the confiscation of wealth and the demonetization of the currency. In each case, demonetization results in a socialization of debt. But FDR poured that debt back into improvements to infrastructure and the resulting employment. Bush and Obama have poured that debt into the pockets of Goldman Sachs, GE and Lockheed Martin.

By: mheld45

mheld45 — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 17:00:10 +0000

OK, and what is the REAL cost of insecurity? The President’s first job is to maintain the physical security of the US. That is and will never be free.

By: REDruin

REDruin — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:28:11 +0000

Obama is contributing to the Libya fight due to a support of burgeoning democracy and because we’ve loathed Qaddafi for years. Not supporting a democratic movement just paints us as the uncaring foreign empire so many people around the world believe we are.

And Bush got us into Iraq and Afghanistan, not Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. Get your facts straight. One war to fix what Daddy didn’t, and another to put those Taliban people in their place, yessir.
-===
The military is called ’4th sector economy’. The military itself produces nothing except destruction. Sure, SUPPLYING the military produces stuff…but the chain ends there. The military’s job is the destruction of resources, not the making of more of them. Bullets and bombs spent do not make more bombs, bullets, lives or highways…they are items of destruction. And thus money spent on the military is a black hole.

The military is neccessary…if you don’t have one, one will come along and have you. But unneeded wars and expenses are not needed.

==RED

By: zotdoc

zotdoc — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:29:49 +0000

Amen and AMEN. lets ask obama,pelosi,reid to pay some of that back to the public they duped into additional wars and stimulus!

By: Gregg Easterbrook

Gregg Easterbrook — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:26:13 +0000

The Depression ended before World War II; during the war, the economy was handicapped by scarcity and rationing; after the war ended, the US economy boomed. It’s an urban legend that war is good for the economy: nearly all businesses prefer peace and stability. Yes, some of the $1.2 trillion has been spent on military pay or manufacturing. But military expenditures are “sunk costs,” not investments. if national security is at stake, we have no choice. National security is not at stake in any of the three currentt wars.

By: frisbeeredcat

frisbeeredcat — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:33:42 +0000

I think our present unemployment problem is due to Wall St. speculation on the housing market, followed by the collapse of our economy. The housing market is still a mess and recovery of housing prices quite simply has not happened yet. This has also lead to increased scrutiny of loan applicants and a tighter credit market overall. People can’t borrow on the value of their homes and can’t spend beyond their means by racking up huge credit card debt. Not buying = not hiring, as so much of our GDP is based on consumer spending. We need a WPA-style jobs program to fix our infrastructure. Put folks to work, restore pride in our country and build/make some cool places for future generations to enjoy as we do of the WPA/CCC projects still in use today. It worked then, it can work now!