War Hasn’t Been So Good For The Economy So Far October 30, 2009
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Politics.trackback
We’ve had two of them going on for going on nine years, and without doing a lot of boring statistical research, I’m going to bet that we’ve spent more dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even adjusted for inflation, than in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam combined. You’d think that all those planes and bombs and tanks and bullets would employ somebody somewhere, but as best as anyone can tell, the only people actually profiting from these street theater insanities are Dick Cheney and the fat-cat board at Halliburton.
I’d say it’s not certain whether government can affect the macro-economy significantly, because they haven’t really tried. T. Boone Pickens thought wind farms would be profitable, and he’s a guy who lives for profit. His grand scheme never came to fruition. Want to know why? He couldn’t get a loan…making you wonder what happened to that other trillion bucks we gave to all those banks, ostensibly so they could loan money to restart the economy.
Maybe we just need a bigger war. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Those damned Iranians are just asking for it.
BW
Much of the military budget goes to the military industrial complex, which does employ a lot of people with good paying jobs.
However, the money we spend building bombs and ammo could be much better spent on things like infrastructure for our country. Once a bomb is detonated, that money is gone. But put money into our infrastructure and we’ll see returns on our investment.
“Much of the military budget goes to the military industrial complex, which does employ a lot of people with good paying jobs.”
Apparently not enough people and not good enough pay. Cory’s contention is that the industrial build-up of WWII was the engine that drove us out of the Great Depression. My point is that if that economic theory held water, we’d already be in the midst of an economic boom (pun intended)…and we’re not.
That’s true. What we had was an artificial recovery after the dot-com bust and 9/11, supported by heavy spending on the military and the creation of a housing bubble.
A lot of of guys write about this subject but you wrote down really true words.