The Military Spending Fairy

[Swede]

Faced with the prospect of cuts to the Defense Department's budget, the defense industry is pushing the story of the military spending fairy on members of Congress. They are telling them that these cuts will lead to the loss of more than 1 million jobs over the next decade.

Believers in the military spending fairy say things like "the government can't create jobs," but also think that military spending creates jobs. Under the military spending fairy story, if the government spends $1 billion dollars paying people to do research or to build items related to the civilian economy it is just a drag on the private economy; however if the same spending goes to military related purposes, then it creates jobs.

It's not clear exactly how the military fairy blesses projects to make them helpful to the economy rather than harmful. For example, the highways were built in the 50s ostensibly in part for defense purposes. They made it easier to move troops and military equipment around the country in the event of an attack. Government subsidized student loans were also originally dubbed as defense loans since they were ostensibly intended in part to produce more graduates in science and engineering who could help us compete with the Soviet Union in defense related technologies.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/the-military-spending-fairy

[truedelphi]

1. A week ago, all these high officials from the military were in front of various

Congressional panels and committees, and their new meme is "Modernizing."

Apparently despite out nation spending more than the next fifty nations combined, we haven't modernized our equipment, artillery, aircraft carriers etc.

And all the various heads of the panels and committees seem to be in agreement - the military really needs to UP the military budget!

[Scuba]

2. Spending on bombs and bullets creates jobs....

... but spending on nurses and teachers doesn't? That's just stupid.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. we are not fighting 'proper' wars so we don't need to spend funding

Once we are out of Iraq and Afghanistan then we can get rid of all the old weapons and stop lining the pockets of the weapon manufacturers