Your counter-factual - bringing back the draft - is, politically, highly implausible.
It's also highly implausible that the military would be made less capital-intensive. The long-term trend is precisely the opposite. Pollin used a standard I/O model. I don't think his paper should be dismissed so lightly. I have substantive questions here on the economics and I would really appreciate it if some people who follow this area could give a substantive response that addresses the questions on macroeconomic models as they are generally used and understood. On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:11 AM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: >> 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 -- Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org [email protected] _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
