Subtitle: Why are we in Kosovo? The term "military Keynesianism" is a misnomer and authorizes a misleading reduction of the question of war economy to the relative size of appropriations for the military in the federal budget. Instead of speculating about the dimensions of a vague metaphor -- mK -- I suggest those interested in the question look at historically-specific texts. A war economy is predicated not on the proportion of miltary spending to the domestic product, but on the way in which productive capabilities and priorities are oriented to maximizing potential wartime output -- both military and *non-military* -- rather than to maximizing domestic welfare of the citizens. For starters, I can recommend the influential survey, published by the Twentieth Century Fund in 1947, _America's Needs and Resources_, by J. Frederic Dewhurst and Associates. The first chapter reviews the impact of the second world war on economic growth in the U.S. The rest of the book may be said to be an effort to "interpret wartime output in terms of peacetime productive probabilities." For those who want to go into depth, see Herman Somers (1950), _Presidential agency : OWMR, the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion_. Here's a trivia question: what famous textbook author was in charge of war-time planning for continuing full employment at the National Resources Planning Board from 1941-1943 and was responsible for the economic and general planning program at the OWMR in 1945? An idea of how the issues of war mobilization and war reconversion seque into those of "peacetime industrial competitiveness" may be had by reading Edward F. Denison's (1962) _The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States and the Alternatives Before Us_, published by the Committee for Economic Development. There is a simple conceptual hinge to the war economy thinking -- the reduction of economic welfare to economic output. One can still detect in Dewhurst and in Denison a shadow of acknowledgement that welfare and output are not synonymous. But the acknowledgement is largely *en passant*. The lessons of war showed economic planners how to increase output, they didn't show them how to increase public welfare. They finessed the dilemma by simply assuming that any increase in output at least "implied" an increase in welfare. The assumption brazenly disregards marginalist economic theory. Today, the conventional wisdom scoffs at any suggestion that increased output doesn't necessarily lead to increased welfare. Say hello to the new war, same as the old war. It's the economy, stupid. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
