Past is Prologue
Immediately after World War II we had the most important choice in our nation’s history. It may not have seemed like it at the time, but the decision in how to proceed has governed our lives for the past 80 years. We could choose to invest in the people or we could build the biggest army the world has ever seen.
Make no mistake, we tried to do both for awhile. The post World War II economy was the greatest in the nation’s history. Any marker that you wanted to use to measure prosperity tells us this. The challenge of history isn’t about remembering what was. Fortunately, we still have people that can tell us first hand about the post-war boom in the economy.
The challenge of history is in determining why. Simply put, we as a country chose to invest in our own people. The GI bill has literally sent millions of people to college. Home ownership rates skyrocketed as America saw the development of a modern and thriving middle class. We owe all of that to those government programs and a strong presence of unions.
In the early 1990s we had a decision to make. The Cold War was over and we had ultimately won. The world will always be a dangerous place, but we had the decision of whether to keep investing in the American people or whether we wanted to keep investing in being a super power.
In 1990 the Cold War was more or less over. In 1990 we were spending 325.1 billion on defense. It reached it’s peak at 752.2 billion in 2011. The chart referenced only goes to 2019, but you get the general idea. Obviously, statistics can cut a number of ways. The same chart has the budget as a percentage of gross domestic product. Those numbers look very different.
Yet, one cannot help but imagine the possibilities. No one would suggest defense spending go to zero or even hold at 1990 levels, but we ultimately spent north of seven trillion dollars on the war on terror. Of course, that’s just one source. Different sources have different amounts. Sure, we killed Saddam Hussein and we killed Osama Bin Laden, but it is fair to ask how the world is a better place after 20 years.
It’s also fair to ask how America is a better place after the last 30 years. We could have retreated to a place of relative strength but one that was more or less an equal partner with the other nations in NATO. We could have heavily invested in our own people.
We could have a stronger living wage. We could have universal health care. We could have free community college at the very least. We could have invested in newer energies and prepared for the 21st century economy. We could have done all of these things and more. They will tell you that we can’t afford those things. Trillions of dollars on the war on terror says otherwise.
It has never been about whether we have the money. It has been about who should get the money. The right decided a long time ago that corporations and national defense needed that money a lot more than people did. They’ll tell you that we can’t afford to help poor people. They’ll tell you that they need to help themselves. They’ll tell you that we can’t afford a standard of living for every human being in the country. We know none of that is true. We choose not to.
It wasn’t all that long ago that anyone with any brains could figure out that this country could afford to pour more $$ into people and actually punch the hell out of poverty. Instead we got a lot of rightwing gab that there was a unique percentage of our people who preferred not to work but rather sit at home and do nothing while the rest of the taxpayers paid them to do so. That sort of blankety-blank **ap rose to the top once again when Biden sent out checks to individuals and families whose jobs disappeared during the onslaught of COVID. It was a true help to all those concerned. But McTurtle et al. were horrified that the wrong people – translation: none of them were “us” – were getting some help.Rugged individualism was the way to go but they made sure to build as many political dams as possible so the folks who were always “red lined” in some way never got the help. And I link all of this to the mind set of the insurrectionists of Jan 6. They are the fluid in the political abscess created by the R’s. They didn’t want to change things so those in constant need of help got so much as a penny. They just wanted to destroy the apparatus that could possibly help. Hence, the list of legislators they wanted to grab and punish, starting with Pence.
1Oh lordy. The “defense” budget. So many questions. But let’s begin with how invading Afghanistan and Iraq would be considered as defense. It did not require being a tactical fighter pilot to distinguish between offensive and defensive military operations. Could have easily stayed at home for that lesson.
Speaking of our national skewed priorities. Finally. The Senate passed the anti-lynching bill. Really. As if lynching was evuh one of the better KKKristofascist ideas. BTW how goes the votes on the ERA?
2fyi Andrew Clyde, (R-GA), Thomas Massie, (R-KY), and Chip Roy, (R-TX) are the House members who voted against it. Runt Paul (R-KY) refrained from filibustering in the Senate. btw KY – he is up for re-election. Please try harder, KY.
Lordy. Please tell us gerrymandering is at fault for our woes. As a nation we’re not as stupid as our elected varmints might indicate, are we?
3It seems to me that this nation is addicted to Defense spending and I don’t see any easy way to change that.
There are good and bad geopolitical reasons for the outsized defense budget, but if you could ignore all that and do something like slash the defense budget by some major amount (say, 50%) the U.S. economy would collapse.
We can say the the U.S. budget should be spent on human development and needs rather than defense needs but most of the defense spending is actually that. It supports not only the people in the military (“only” about 2% of the population), but their contractors, their employees, and the whole supply chain those contractors buy from.
On top of that a lot of our technological advantage is driven by defense budget. Defense contractors take on tech challenges that would never be funded any other way, and some of that does indeed “trickle down” into the commercial space that improves our standards of living.
But to your main point, I don’t see what other “choice” we have, any more than a heroin addict has.
4You raise a good point Alan. I don’t think anything good would come from cutting any budget item that severely that rapidly. Anything like that would have to be gradual. I think you could still have a robust national defense and curtail spending some. Many of the things we invest in are outdated technologies.
Technically, my wife’s salary falls under the defense budget as a contractor at NASA. However, I think many of these discussions fall within the scope of hyperbole. I don’t know any serious politician that suggests we cut the defense budget by 50 percent overnight. Even if that were the ultimate goal it would have to be phased in over decades and not years. That is one way in which the right avoids discussing real issues. They shift it to a strawman absurd argument that no one is really fighting.
Let’s say we cut it back five percent. Five percent of 700 billion dollars is 35 billion dollars. What could be paid for with 35 billion? How much could be added to that pie simply by readjusting the tax code and closing loopholes? I’m sure that would provide seed money for a national health care system, forgiving student loans, or investing more heavily in green energy. The point is that we tell ourselves we can’t afford stuff. It’s not a question of whether we can but a question of what we choose to afford.
5The official budget number is just what is disbursed to the Pentagon. However, there are many other categories of defense spending that more than double the advertised amount. Here’s a link that is from a couple of years ago with all the sordid details.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/tom-dispatch-america-defense-budget-bigger-than-you-think/
Another point is when politicians talk about the defense budget, the price tag is for the coming year. When they discuss social spending, they always frame the cost through the next 10 years, making the numbers seem ominous.
The military industrial complex spreads out its money to most congressional districts across the country. Often that money accounts for a large percentage of jobs in a district, especially rural ones. The politicians are all too eager to tout the jobs they helped secure, all while lining their pockets with sweet campaign donations from the industry. Eisenhower was right.
6You’re right on Mark. Unfortunately, politicians of both parties are in the back pockets of the military industrial complex, but probably more so with the conservatives. We’ve proven for decades that congress can’t find their way to balance spending to help people and have significant defense. It’s only worse now with the political climate. I think part of the homeless crisis is a result of this inability to balance spending to help people and is only getting worse.
7We could reduce the military budget by 75% and still be out spending any other country. Our rePUKEian obsession with death and killing is disgusting.
8lol Okay then, time to plunge in with either Occam’s Razor ‘economics’ or what some might say is the naive view. A dollar spent by government is a dollar fueling the economy. Ergo if that same dollar is transferred out of the MIC and into the economy to build housing for the homeless, schools, hospitals or anything, it will produce other jobs, albeit different jobs. Technology used to build bombs and missiles will require transition time, training and retooling will be better put to use on Green Energy projects, medical equipment, etc. But hell, why build hellfire helicopters when we can build “flight for life” helicopters.
As both Mark and Steve have noted this does require moving an intransigent Congress off the dime. By public will and the pressure of the vote, we can do this, and yes it will take time. But hey, pepper them with that good ol’ American exceptionalism and fighting spirit of which they are so fond of spouting.
So many polls/surveys demonstrate that 70-80% of we the people can agree on many things. Time to make our voices louder than the ~18% or so of Qcumber conservative wingnuts shouting out their crazy memes and delusions.
9After WW1, military spending was cut drastically. When WW2 rolled around, it took considerable effort to build up enough forces to fight the Nazis.
The Bomb scared people enough that military spending became increasingly untouchable – especially once the defense industry included lobbying fees into their no-bid contracts.
10we never learn. shoulda listened to eisenhower.
11