BuelahMan
Lynda
kelsosnuts
How’s That New Military Job Working For You?
Posted by BuelahMan on November 12, 2009
The MIC (Military Industrial Complex or Big Military) is in full tilt. They are growing in terms of money spent and control they have in the world.
But even worse is the fact that as normal industrial output is stifled and jobs are forever lost, we have the military to take their place, right? Just like the other night at the Veterans Day Parade and the young father whose son just joined the Air Force simply because he could not find work or afford college: we are being forced into service (one way or the other) of the military, instead of items we can use and consume for peaceful purposes.
But, if you ever took time to study history, you would find that previous Empires died the same death while the citizens were being told the same lies. The Roman Empire was over-extended and became too militaristic and could not support the behemoth it grew in to (much of its purpose, too, was to control the earth’s resources).
I have always questioned the replacement jobs that military produces for the manufacturing sector and whether or not it is sustainable. It, of course, is not, but it is a seeming light at the end of the tunnel for poor, young, rednecks and minorities. Nothing could be further from the truth, as is displayed by the fact that we have privatized much of our military and it costs us far more to do what we could do by necessity, if we were truly attacked (and we have not been attacked by any of the people we now occupy).
Read the full story at Washington’s Blog, but it has been confirmed that Defense Spending Creates Fewer Jobs Than Other Types Of Spending:
The table first shows in column 1 the data on the total number of jobs created by $1 billion in spending for alternative end uses. As we see, defense spending creates 8,555 total jobs with $1 billion in spending. This is the fewest number of jobs of any of the alternative uses that we present. Thus, personal consumption generates 10,779 jobs, 26.2 percent more than defense, health care generates 12,883 jobs, education generates 17,687, mass transit is at 19,795, and construction for weatherization/infrastructure is 12,804. From this list we see that with two of the categories, education and mass transit, the total number of jobs created with $1 billion in spending is more than twice as many as with defense.
So how do you like the idea that your country has strong-armed us into being its military slaves while, at the same time, indiscriminately killing and occupying innocent others?
Suzan said
I’ve been reporting on this phenomena since the Raygun Revolution.
Thank you for your fine dissection of where these jobs fit into the economic tailspin puzzle.
S
So how do you like the idea that your country has strong-armed us into being its military slaves while, at the same time, indiscriminately killing and occupying innocent others?
Tengrain said
B-Man -
That’s astonishing, I’ve never seen it laid out like that. It sort of puts that whole Blackwater as capitalism argument to rest.
Regards,
Tengrain
nicki nicki tembo said
You knocked this one out the park B-man. This is one for great discourse.
It’s big business. Can it be any more plain (energy, wall street and the MIC proposing/writing policy for the Bush regime and now or rather still big pharma, wall street and the MIC proposing/writing policy for the Obama regime) that the business of American gov’t is business? And I don’t mean The SB’s albeit they generate over sixty percent of the jobs.
Over and over the testimony of time illustrates that empires are lost when inadequate men (and we’ve had a gang of ‘em haven’t we?) become leaders and war is waged for base reasons or trumped upped causes.
Kelsosnuts said
The whole thing is a disgrace and B´Man you put some good bone structure here underneath the argument Kucinich and Paul have been making in Congress since forever. Are you actually Paul Craig Roberts in diguise.(you´re both anti-war at the maximum, and both Southern!)
It´s fucking depressing and scary down here, man. I don´t know what´s going to happen each 8 hours and it´s difficult to plan a week in advance. I think the fellahs down here are right. Just pack light get a bunch of fake documents that will stand up to a scan and assume you´re going to be on the move every 6 months. I´m hearing Cesar Gaviria/Piedad Córdoba dream ticket in 2010. They should handle a brute like Bermudez even if he picks a moderate like Carasquila-Barrera. But let´s walk through the scenarios if Gaviria/Córdoba win. They got two jobs to do first: GET A PEACE PROCESS STARTED and whether they keep Irguran (he´s the best of the Conservatives) or not START LEGALIZATION OF DRUGS AND CREATE FUTURES MARKET IN COCA LEAVES. Well, they should have those salted away within two week of inauguration! AND MAYBE BEFORE ANY OFIT, THEY HAVE TO CLOSE ALL THE USA BASES AND THROW AMBASSADOR BROWNFIELDOUT!
People worry about Obama´s safety? Well, this is an easy call for Obama: terminate Gaviria and Cordoba´s lives with extreme prejudice! I´ve written it before and I´ll write it again. I wish i didn´t have to B¨Man because you´ve explained this to me twice already in a way that made sense.
Nobody knows or cares about these things. I believe you and Jay. It´s like Occam´s Razor. When you have a bunch of solutions that work, the simplest is usually the best. Americans are ill served by their media and also complicit in their own ignorance. I don´t expect ANYBODY to know the names of the people on the Nairobi city council but I expect people to know the greatest president Colombia ever had and the (gay) man who took Pablo Escobar down. I expect people to know who´s Nobel Prize was robbed so it could go Obama, especially considering she´s the best-known peace activist in the world.
The only part I don´t quite accept of you and Jay´s hypothesis is that Colombians are just like everyone else: they watch the news a little compulsively I´ll grant, but they also watch stuff like FRIENDS and SEINFELD or whatever. And their Telenovelas and the soccer — they got a great premier league and a solid national team. They like heavy metal and rap and house and all their own foklorico.
But……Obama will get the same credit for assassinating them and much more than Cesar Gaviria got for the final raid on Escobar´s palace. Now, let´s extend that scenario a little. This businesso of Córdoba being “too close to Chavez” is bullshit. Chavez is the fucking spokesman for the 1998 democratic wave. Of course, he knows what´s going on the country which borders his. And vice versa for Córdoba. Where´s the EVIDENCE of this claim? And why would being friendly with the head-of-state of your neighbor be bad? Obama and Harper get along fine and their politics are closer than Chavez and Córdoba´s are. Chavez is obsessed by the economy. He´s an inflation fighting fiend more in the mode of Reagan than Fidel Csstro. Córdoba´s a PEACE ACTIVIST. She probably is closer to Jim McGovern than she is with most people in her own party. I wish they´d have come out and said “we´re going to alternate a WAR PRIZE with a PEACE PRIZE on alternate years. This year it´s the War Prize and it goes to Barack Obama.·
Now, even I have the luxury of laughing about this but it is not funny in the slightest. No one down here is rolling over for Kissinger like in 1973. It would be worse than the former Yugoslavia if that happened and the mayhem would spread EVERYWHERE. There just isn´t any patience left. You assassinate Gaviria and Córdoba, that´s it. There´s no turning back. It´s just like Milosevic. Your only way through is TO KILL ANYONE WHO RAISES A PEEP ABOUT THIS EVERYWHERE. The only Americans who care are probably college students, so, if you´re Obama you got to take out something like 1/8 of Stanford and Harvard student body and close every school in the country. And we havent begun discussing Russia, China or India. Or France. Or even Israel for that matter. Psycho as Israel is, they aren´t stupid and they know that supporting Apartheid almost bankrpted the whole state. Israel´s governmment is one of the world´s most bloodthirsty but they come in about #4, They are not leading the league. Not by a longshot. Id expect Israel to stay neutral and out of Obama´s way.
From Colombian sub Housing minister Podlesky to Nicolas Sarkozy, there is only one person who is playing around and not understandng the balances. That is, of course, Barack Obama. Much as Kissinger would like to give Obama a clipboard, a whisle and a toy football and tell him he´s the “the Coach, now run along and play,” that is double plus unavailable to Kissinger, If Cindy Sheehan gets called “racist” a few times each day, they got to let Obama make some followon decisions of CONSEQUENCE or you´d have a Maureen Dowd bullshit Tissue Of Lies NYT piece that would set every city in the USA on fire.
I´m like you, B´man. I am passionate about peace and non-violence within countries and I also think 2A is a political trick by Republicrats and Demopubicans exactly to keep people apart. Of course, gun owners´have rights to own guns. The government has a right to try to regulate them and set harsh laws if they´re used in the commissiom of a crime and if they cant get those laws passed too bad. But it´s not about guns. Anybody can get an illegal firearm with about three phone calls. The VERY POINT of this is to separate cultures: hunters and non-hunters. I believe a person has a right to hunt so long as it´s fine with the Fish And Wildlife commissiions and they´re in season. But THAT not anythng to do with the point. I merely know I´ve written some unorthodox things and you have readers who are hunter and the point is understanding cultural traditions.
So, while I´d like to luxuriate in my pacisfism, there´s no time. The USA has to get the fuck out of South America tomorrow morning or have a REAL RE-THINK on this notion that any foreign politician who wins running a PEOPLES´PLATFORM is ipso facto America´s ENEMY. NOBODY WANTS ENEMIES. EVERYONE WANTS THE SAME THINGS. EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN WAY WHICH IS APPROPRIATE FOR THAT CULTURE. LATIN AMERICANS ARE CRAZILY POLITE. IT´S NOT SOMETHING AMERICANS ARE USED TO BUT LIVING HERE,MAN, YOU BETTER LEARN THOSE CODES OF COURTESY AND HONOR FAST. OBAMA DID NOT DO THIS WHICH CUT OFF ANY THOUGH OFDIPLOMACY. PEOPLE WERE JUST TOO CRAZED-UP ABOUT HAVING TO OBEY THIS MAN WHO HAD JUST INSULTED A BILLIION PEOPLE. AND IT´S TOO DAMNED LATE TO SEND HILLARY CLINTON OR JESSE JACKSON IN THERE TO FIX IT ALL UP, LIKE THEY ALWAYS HAVE TO DO.
It´s very much game-on. The nnly winning path through this is PEACE.