America's Military Keynesianism

[Illuminatus Primus]

Isn't that a bit like saying that you drove across town in order to warm up your car? It seems like a rather indirect route:

1. Tax
2. Spend on enormous military R&D, procurement, maintenance, and employee budget
3. Some portion of military R&D might be applicable to civilian consumer goods
4. Congratulate oneself for improving consumer goods

Why not simply subsidize consumer research spending more?

I agree. I was just pointing out that this is one of the major sources of huge U.S.-driven technological development in all industries, since "government" dirigisme is totally unacceptable. I'd say we should just throw real cash and real programs with real goals toward space development as well, but the politicians would never consistently fund or manage the effort. Claim its a military or hegemonic necessity? Then you'll get it.

[MKSheppard]

Well, the Europeans are off practising Socialism (*grasp*) so they don't have money to spend on toys.

The UK, Australia, and France spend roughly about 3% of their GDP each year on blowing up Brown people. The rest of europe sort of moderates between 2% and 1.5%

[Darth Wong]

Because killing brown people more efficiently and lethally requires fundamental research in all sorts of disciplines as well as applied research.

Case in point; SDI really funded a lot of good advances in fundamental research in the 80s.

Don't be silly. Direct research into consumer applications would also yield unintended consequences. You'd still get much better bang for your buck if you invested directly into consumer oriented research.

[Elfdart]

Sheepfucker, you aren't one dumb twat. You're three or four dumb twats bundled together.

1) The old War Spending Relative To GDP Canard is the most moronic thing the war whores have ever come up with since Yellow Rain. First, it assumes that war spending should be based on the economy and not say, what is actually needed to defend the country. Second, while the size of the economy has growm since WW2 (much of that based on service, trading and speculating), that doesn't mean more weapons are needed to defend the country. The US economy might have grown, but the nation itself (you know, the thing the armed forces are supposed to defend) has not. So the whole GDP thing is a big red herring that you seriously need to shove up your ass fins first.

2) The fact that the armed forces lacked equipment in 1950 proves that the original war whores didn't want to expand war production (as detailed in NSC-68 ) in 1950 how, exactly? Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit is it, numbnuts?

3) When Johnson refers to the fact that much of the money and brainpower used on war could have been better spent on making cars that people actually want to buy (among other things), you counter with this gem:

Nevermind that:

1.) Large aircraft for Strategic Air Command (B-52s and KC-135s) drive the civilian jet aviation industry

And this subsidy has let to some bad side effects. An over reliance on air travel has moved things like high speed rail to the back burner (or off the stove entirely) and now that fuel prices have skyrocketed, several of the biggest airlines are now bankrupt or near bankruptcy. In order to cut costs, airlines have cut corners. So the notion that subsidizing Boeing and the other plane builders is necessarily a good thing is nonsense. What's good for Boeing is not always what's good for the country.

2.) Nuclear powered submarines are proving grounds for the techniques needed to build and man a large number of nuclear power plants in the united states.

Which is very helpful when new nuclear plants aren't being built in anything like the numbers needed to justify this extravagant "proving ground".

3.) ICBMs provided many of our early space launchers and helped get the US rocket industry off the ground.

4.) Surveillance and Communications Sats; oh gee; look at how much they've improved our lives; because the military funds all the bleeding edge research and the results filter down to Ma Bell and other companies' commercial projects.

Of course such things would have only been possible when Congress let the War Department spend all that money. If anyone else had done it, there would be no rockets or digital porn beaming into people's homes. Yeah, that justifies TRILLIONS of dollars being spent.

All those jobs were being diverted into the Aerospace sector, led by such giants as Boeing, Lockheed, McDonnell, Douglas, North American, Convair, and others.

Which proves Chalmers Johnson's point, dummy. While American knowhow was being used on things like the M-60 machinegun, the V-22 and the Sgt. York, the Japanese built cars people wanted to drive, TVs people wanted to watch, and other consumer goods. As car industry expert Ed Wallace pointed out on his show, many of Honda's car designers were originally aircraft engineers, but since the US disallowed any Japanese aircraft industry for a number of years after WW2, they all went into designing cars and bikes. For two generations, their best minds have been used in making better consumer goods, which is why the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry are the two best-selling cars in the US.

I don't like DHS either; but why is it included in the military industrial complex?

Because ginning up irrational fear is part of keeping people on a wartime footing. It's easier to convince people who are scared shitless to invade a poverty-stricken hellhole and kill the folks who live there than convincing someone who thinks rationally. All the friskings, domestic spying and other police state measures are also meant to get people to accept their role as sheep. If people think for themselves and think of themselves as citizens rather than serfs, they might oppose the latest war and we can't have that, can we?

To separate the Department of Fatherland Security from the War Department is like separating the Gestapo, Abwehr and Propoganda Ministry from the Nazi war machine. They were as much a part of the war effort as any soldats in their Feldgrau.

[Darth Wong]

Shep, how can anyone argue that nuclear-powered submarines are necessary in order to develop civilian nuclear reactor technology, when Canada, right next door, has developed very highly regarded civilian nuclear reactors without a nuclear submarine fleet? And ours require less fuel enrichment than yours; we could run a CANDU reactor off low-grade fuel that would be considered useless waste in your reactors.

[Ma Deuce]

For two generations, their best minds have been used in making better consumer goods, which is why the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry are the two best-selling cars in the US.

I don't know about other consumer goods segments, but Detroit's problems have far more to do with fixed structural costs (generated by overpaid union workers and having to foot their healthcare liabilities thanks to the US lack of a universal healthcare system) and often shortsighted, incompetent management than any lack of design and engineering talent.

[Sea Skimmer]

Satellite navigation is one thing we sure as shit wouldn’t have without massive levels of military spending. Heck just look at all the bullshit Galileo is running into, even now that’s its become a completely government run project they still can’t get enough funding thrown together from the entire EU, and this is coming more then 30 years after the first GPS prototypes orbited.

[J]

It would be interesting to know how much of America's GDP comes from manufacturing goods, extracting resources from the Earth, and building infrastructure as opposed to pulling money out of thin air with questionable investment & banking schemes.

Doing a quick bit of digging gives the following figures:

12.2% for manufacturing
8.7% rest of industry
0.6% agriculture
8% financial services
70.5% remainder of services

I didn't think it was quite that bad. Those fancy paper shufflers who pull money out of thin air added around a trillion dollars to the US GDP, or 2/3 as much as all US manufacturing put together.

[Darth Wong]

Satellite navigation is one thing we sure as shit wouldn’t have without massive levels of military spending. Heck just look at all the bullshit Galileo is running into, even now that’s its become a completely government run project they still can’t get enough funding thrown together from the entire EU, and this is coming more then 30 years after the first GPS prototypes orbited.

That conclusion does not follow. The US could have spent a fraction of its military spending directly toward space programs and gotten the same result with less money.

[Nephtys]

It would be interesting to know how much of America's GDP comes from manufacturing goods, extracting resources from the Earth, and building infrastructure as opposed to pulling money out of thin air with questionable investment & banking schemes.

Doing a quick bit of digging gives the following figures:

12.2% for manufacturing
8.7% rest of industry
0.6% agriculture
8% financial services
70.5% remainder of services

I didn't think it was quite that bad. Those fancy paper shufflers who pull money out of thin air added around a trillion dollars to the US GDP, or 2/3 as much as all US manufacturing put together.

Services include a lot of things. Such as virtually all of the tech industry, medicine, pure research and so on.

Our manufacturing sector has still grown in absolute terms over the last several decades, just not as much as services. That's not a bad thing. It's not all 'paper shuffling' or 'burger flipping'.

It's been compared to how Agriculture's relative growth capped when Industry went into full development. Given how trade and relative advantage works, it makes perfect economic sense to let menial, low-complexity manufacturing take place in China or wherever and do R&D or precision manufacturing here.

[Sea Skimmer]

That conclusion does not follow. The US could have spent a fraction of its military spending directly toward space programs and gotten the same result with less money.

On paper maybe, in reality that would have absolutely never happened given the extremely limited civilian use positional of the early satellite systems (and GPS it’s self before 1989); the money would just not be spent. Developing satellite navigation took quite a bit longer then it did NASA to go from creation to moon landing, and even that rather more spectacular piece of research and engineering couldn’t keep it self funded in the end.

[Darth Wong]

That conclusion does not follow. The US could have spent a fraction of its military spending directly toward space programs and gotten the same result with less money.

On paper maybe, in reality that would have absolutely never happened given the extremely limited civilian use positional of the early satellite systems (and GPS it’s self before 1989); the money would just not be spent.

How can you seriously say what would or wouldn't get spending priority in a hypothetical USA which has a completely transformed less militaristic culture?

Developing satellite navigation took quite a bit longer then it did NASA to go from creation to moon landing, and even that rather more spectacular piece of research and engineering couldn’t keep it self funded in the end.

Who said it has to be self funded? We're talking about a hypothetical USA where the government subsidizes massive public works projects for public benefit rather than subsidizing massive military spending with only indirect public benefit.

[Stuart Mackey]

Well, the Europeans are off practising Socialism (*grasp*) so they don't have money to spend on toys.

The UK, Australia, and France spend roughly about 3% of their GDP each year on blowing up Brown people. The rest of europe sort of moderates between 2% and 1.5%

Australia spends arounf 1.9-2% on defence.