Thanks Michael
You make some very valuable points. I should say that I am not doing an
academic take, but a commentary/polemic for one of my newspaper columns. I will
take your advice seriously, though. I read the Stiglitz paper way back and have
forgotten about it. I will look at it again.
One of the things I want to include in my column is the extent to which the US
political economy relies on the military and aerospace industry (manufacturers
of drones), and the cost of wars since 1945. Might not be able to do it in 800
- 1000 words, but....
Another angle is how much "veterans" are praised and honoured and celebrated,
why how presidential candidates are obsessed with it. I want to present it as
Non-American, and a pacifist. Still mulling. But yeah, thanks.
Ismail
Dr Ismail LagardienVisiting ProfessorWits University School of Governance
Nihil humani a me alienum puto
On Sunday, 6 September 2020, 17:19:49 GMT+2, Michael Meeropol
<[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Ismail --- Some things that probably needs to be clarified are the
differences between the FLOW of annual expenditures, the LONG TERM COMMITMENTS
of currently "promised" spending (contracts with military contractors, pay for
the armed forces, long term repair and maintenance of facilities owned by the
defense establishment, and most importantly -- long term care for returning
veterans by the VA), and the VALUE of capital assets owned by the various
branches of the military. SOme analyses have focused only on the short term
budgetary authority (and some of that is even hidden of course).
Of course, the most interesting question(s) involve whether or not all that
spending by the US raises economic growth from what it would have been had we
had the budgetary approaches, of, say, France, Italy or Norway or actually
SLOWS economic growth -- there have been arguments on both sides --- Seymour
Melman in PENTAGON CAPITALISM always argued that military spending SLOWED
economic growth whereas, I believe, the Monthly Review Stagnation school argues
that military spending (and wars of course) actually delay or reverse the long
run tendency towards stagnation.
I've always tried to "finesse" the issue by suggesting that the bloated
millitary budget in the US is a VAST redistribution of income from taxpayers in
general to the defense industry -- particularly "owners" with large blocks of
stock in those companies.
(you might also check out the methodology of Joe Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes who
attempted to compute the ENTIRE (long run and short run) cost of the Iraq War
sometime back in 2004 or 2005 ...)
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