Military production is commodity production creating private profit, except in cases where it's non-commercial government production. The fact that ammunition, vehicles etc. are destroyed in the war does not alter this fact. If I buy an apple and I eat the apple, then the apple is also destroyed, but that doesn't mean that the apple wasn't a commodity.
Of course, if in response to a war, military production is increased, that does create jobs and incomes, but Pollin relativises that the money spent on military equipment and staff could have been better spent with more positive effect on the economy. However this cuts no ice with the politicians at all, because if they are going to have a war, they are going to have a war, and then Mr Pollin should get out of the way. Joseph Stiglitz screamed and wailed about the immorality of the gigantic cost of the Iraq/Afghanistan war, but what he and his Demopublican cronies forget altogether is that the gigantic heap of money did not disappear into a black hole (well, some did; bales of US banknotes airfreighted into Iraq were simply stolen). That gigantic heap of money was paid to military staffs, contracting companies, functionaries etc. What Stiglitz does not tell you, and what nobody tells you, is who got rich from the war. And who got rich from the war probably included some of his own friends and colleagues who profited from the war's opportunities. J.
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