> In the December 2011 Pollin paper, $1 billion in military spending > creates 11,200 jobs, whereas $1 billion in domestic spending creates > at least 15,100 jobs by the least job-creation-efficient means (tax > cuts for personal consumption.)
For what it's worth, I don't believe this story. The idea is that military spending is "capital intensive," but that could be fixed by bringing back the draft and making the armed forces less capital-intensive and high-tech. (One of the last times the US had sustained full employment was during the Vietnam war.) Even if military spending is necessarily more capital intensive, the demand for capital goods raises the demand for labor indirectly (since capital goods have to be produced by labor). It's more plausible to say that, given the location US wars and military bases, military spending has a bigger import component than does civilian spending (so that a lot of "job creation" occurs outside the US economy). But as I understand it there are a bunch of legislative restrictions on the use of military funds (weapons shouldn't be bought from "foreigners") that don't apply to purchases by civilians (or for that matter, people who work for the military domestically). I don't have enough information to say which is more important. But maybe we should argue that the way to shift job creation to the US would be to close foreign military bases and end the wars. -- Jim Devine / If you're going to support the lesser of two evils, you should at least know the nature of that evil. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
