Re: The Pentagon and Poverty

[Clifford Poirot <cpoirot@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul,

Please note that since I am replying off campus I have to reply both to you
and to the list, so if you want to avoid getting ahead of the list, you may
wish to wait until this comes through on the list to reply.

Anyway-see my responses below:

-----Original Message-----
From: pdavidso [mailto:pdavidso@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Fri 2/27/2004 6:01 PM
To: Clifford Poirot
Cc: pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: The Pentagon and Poverty



>Cliff are you assuming full employment even without the increased military
>spending?  And if not, then isn't it a terrible drain on resources to leave

>resources idle -- especially labor resources which simply cannot be carried

>over with little "user cost" of wastage till the next accounting period.

No I am not assuming full employment. Even at less than full employment
military spending has a number of negative effects-both short and long run.
In the short run, it depleats budget resources from the rest of the budget.
Yes, we can run deficits (though I disagree with you, as you are no doubt
aware, about how large and for how long you can run deficits) but even in a
world we run deficits, we must still make choices about how to spend tax
dollars (or are you arguing we have an infinite supply of tax dollars and a
finite number of projects on which to spend tax dollars?).

In the long run military spending distorts priorities and locks the economy
into a path dependent situation in which-to borrow a 1960's phrase-the
military industrial complex distorts the domestic political debate. It was
that scion of left wing communism, Eisenhower, who made that point back in
the 1950's.

>We may agree that it would have been "better" if only Bush would have spent

>the money on rebuilding infrastructure, or educating people, etc.,

Yes-I prefer hospitals to tanks.

 >but in the absense of military spending do you not conceive the
possibility that >the "deficit" would have been parri passu smaller -- and
both Democrats and
>Republicans would have applauded the smaller deficits as more desirable
than
>th current deficits.

Let's decid which issue we are arguing about first and foremost-military
spending or deficits. Surely you are not arguing that if domestic spending
is not politically possible, we should champion the cause of military
spending just so we run  a deficit.

I think it would have been politically possible for the President over the
last four years to have submitted a budget to the Congress that focused on
transfers to the States. I am not convinced that a smaller deficit would
have been a bad thing. I certainly do not approve of Bush's jokes about
"hitting the trifecta" and spending money on the military in ways that is
actually irrelevant to the war on terrorism.


>Are you kidding or starry-eyed?  Do you really think the American people --

>including liberals-- would go for more foreign aid to Egypt, etc, while our

>schools, roads, etc are falling apart?

You don't need **more** foreign aid, you need better targeted foreign aid. A
substantial part of our aid to Egypt has been in the form of military
transfers and military aid. This only helps to fuel the arms race in the
Middle East (but perhaps we should promote that as a way to bring full
employment to the Arab World). Our aid could be restructured in the form of
debt relief and better targeted to development assistance-perhaps at the
same time tying it to improvement in human rights.

There is really not even that much to sell to the American Public-but it has
a great selling point. The selling point is that we have acquiesced in the
rise of Islamicist Extremism in Egypt and that lack of development promotes
Islamicist Extremsim. In the rhetoric of the Cold War, we should shift to
winning hearts and minds.

And this was the gist of my response to Sven-there are ways to promote
development without increasing the Pentagon's budget.

>What world do you live in?  Do you really expect a Marshall plan to be
>acceptable to the American electorate?

Keeping a couple of hundred thousand troops, spending 87 billion in Iraq,
giving a couple of billion a year to various regimes throughout the Middle
East is acceptable to the American  public. What I propose is retargeting
the assistance which might even enable us to spend less. And so, yes, in the
context of an overall agreement between Israel and Palestine that would
bring real security and real economic development and move the Middle East
to democracy-a Marshall Plan that did not increase the amount of overall tax
dollars going to the Middle East would be quite acceptable to the American
public.

This would be a better, and  I think ultimately cheaper way to bring
democratic progress and effect regime change in the Middle East than
invading countries. A democratic and developing Palestine would be far more
devastating to the Wahabbi fundamentalism of the Saudis and the Baathist
fascism of the Syrians than our current knee jerk policy thought up in the
dank recesses of ex-Trotskyite minds.

>Sven  is at least politically more saavy in my view.

A President who would get on the road and sell a development plan to the
American public and the UN for the Middle East as a means of fighting
terrorism could get the same support Bush got for war. Hell, the President
wouldn't even have to make up stories about yellow cake uranium. And
ultimately, such a plan might actually reduce the threat of terrorism,
whereas our current strategy has succeeded in producing not one Al Quaeda,
but now many Al Quadas and succeeded in making Che Guevara's dictum of "not
one, but many Vietnams" come true.

Chip Poirot