So far, the mainstream news media and the Conservative
propaganda machine both agree that the payments to the poor and elderly should
be the focus of public discussions of a deal to cut government spending to go
along with the almost certain increase in taxes on the ultra-wealthy and
wealthy.
That may be changing now that 22 House members from both sides of the aisle announced that military spending should be part of the deal to avoid the fiscal cliff.
The dirty little not-so-secret story of the deficit we face
is that military spending and historic tax cuts for the wealthy are what fueled
its tremendous increase during the Bush and early Obama years.
Here are some facts I picked up from the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the national lobbying group for the
Quakers:
- Military spending has doubled in the last 10 years, primarily to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- U.S. per capita spending on its military budget has increased by 72 percent since 1998.
- Military spending accounts for half of all the funds that Congress appropriates every year.
- The U.S. military budget accounted for nearly 48 percent of global military spending, as of 2010. U.S. presence in the world includes hundreds of military bases in Europe.
After all other wars
since World War II, the nation has cut back on military spending and tended to
other needs at home. The cut in military spending after the Cold War ended was
called the Peace Dividend. It is most
associated with the Clinton years of economic growth and federal deficit
reduction. The other thing that Clinton (and before him, Bush I) did was to
raise taxes, especially on the more well-off.
That increasing
government revenues and spending on people instead of guns grows the economy
makes sense for all except the navel-gazers brainwashed by the myth that the
market is always right. The tax part is simple: rich folk save their money,
whereas the government spends its money and that creates jobs.
Military spending
doesn’t re-circulate into the economy creating echoes of additional wealth as
much as spending on people does. There is a value in investing in military
technology and a lot of technological advances began in the military, but if we
put the same research dollars to use on peaceful uses immediately it would make
our research much more efficient. Let’s put it this way: Would you rather have
our scientists and research engineers working on new bombing systems or a
barrier system that keeps the shores protected from the next Sandy or Katrina
without harming the environment? That’s an easy call except to the hoard of
elected officials and lobbyists who feed at the trough of military contractors.
One thing to keep in
mind is that neither party is all that serious about the deficit. It’s just a
side show to make sure that we don’t go too far into downward income
redistribution. The so-called fiscal cliff leads to a great reduction of the
deficit, as government spending is cut and taxes are raised. Even Republicans,
however, admit that if we suck too much money out of the economy to pay to the
rich folk and foreign banks and governments that own our debt we’ll sink into
another depression. So everyone’s a Keynesian, but no one wants to admit it.
The deficit was
caused by low taxes on the wealthy and military spending. Those are the places
to look for the money to pump into the economy while stabilizing the debt
level.
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