National Defense and Jobs

In a post on Wednesday, Robert Reich observes that our defense  budget contains our only long-run jobs program, a program that nurtures obsolete weapons and many other things we do not need for the purpose of keeping some nearly four million people employed.

Reich scores this as nothing less than insane. He wonders: " Wouldn’t it be better to have a jobs program that created things we really need — like light-rail trains, better school facilities, public parks, water and sewer systems, and non-carbon energy sources — than things we don’t, like obsolete weapons systems? . . .

"Maybe . . . the way to convince Republicans and blue-dog Democrats to spend more federal dollars putting Americans back, and working on things we genuinely need: Call it the National Defense Full Employment Act."

It's a shame that President Obama chose the likes of Larry Summers to advise him on the economy rather than Robert Reich and Paul Krugman.

Comments

[Bob Hockett]

Thanks for this, Steve,

I often miss Robert Reich's presence in government!

A couple of supplementary thoughts:

One is that while the military seems now to constitute our principal jobs and education program, our penal regime seems in parallel to constitute our principal social welfare program! I've read quite a few anecdotal reports of recidivists who purport to have committed more crimes simply in order to regain a place to sleep, eat, and bathe.

Another thought is this: reliance on the military and the penal system to keep people employed, fed, housed, clothed etc. ought to strike self-named 'conservatives' as ... dare I say it? ... 'socialism'!

Thanks again,

Bob