Posted on 11/18/2016 7:51:14 AM PST by pinochet
War is bad for the economy. And its bad for almost everybody. There are a few who have made a handsome living building parts for the war machine. But they could be doing things for the population if the government contracts weren’t so lucrative.
Lets face it. In this world, at the bottom most fundamental level, “might makes right” is as true as ever. We need to be strong. And strong is ever evolving. We need to be powerful enough to handle future attacks in any form.
But war kills far more people than just combatives. We in the US have gone 175 years without war on our soil except 911 and Pearl Harbor. Our press leaves out the destruction of lives, infrastructure and business when the bombs and bullets start to fly. And too many of us are uncurious about the lives within a war zone. We tend to only ask, who is winning? And not, at what cost?
While our defense contractors are necessary. Beware, they are in the business of war. Their weapons are sold to us first. But then they are sold to our friends and too many show up in the hands of our enemies. And if not our weapons then the copies of weapons we designed and they reproduced cheaper 5 to 10 years later.
Machiavelli once said "Do not do your enemy a small injury".
What he meant was "If you are going to act against an enemy, do not do anything which will just piss him off, without destroying his ability or willingness to retaliate". As you said, our military actions should be brief, but leave the enemy with an unwillingness to do anything which may result in our deciding to return.
So far, in our "War on terror", we have been blowing away some inconsequential desert bandits, without going after the REAL leadership, the people who supply ISIS and the rest with funding.
Trump needs to say "If you give support to people who commit terrorist acts against Americans, our military will be tasked with killing you, and we won't care WHO you are. Kuwaiti banker, Saudi Prince, or President of a NATO member, we will have people coming to kill you".
War isn’t good for the economy, it doesn’t create wealth it only spends it. Furthermore war is the fastest way to erode our civil liberties.
It all has to do with perception. Try this:
If you walk by a fenced yard, and you’re a thief, and you see an expensive bicycle in there. But you also notice a sign on the fence “Beware of dog.” When you look in the yard and see a miniature poodle that maybe weighs 15 pounds, is that going to stop you? Probably not. But if there’s a 125 pound rottweiler laying down watching you right next to the bike, that changes the perception. And it also will probably make you walk on, quietly.
red
One must accept that throughout human history the world has been ruled by the aggressive use of force. It was that way for countries 5 thousand years ago, and it is still true today. Warfare has always been part of human civilization and it will be for the foreseeable future. Once we accept that as reality then the trick becomes to create a military so technologically advanced, so well trained, so well equipped and so combat ready that it cannot lose. We had that until obama became CiC and started intentionally degrading and demoralizing it. Now, aggressive powers have sensed weakness and are preparing to conquer other lands and seas, only a very fast rebuild and upgrade of our military will prevent World War III.
If I break the glass in your house I’ll stimulate the economy!
The Keynesians were wrong about war being good for the economy, especially a world war. WWII killed something like 75 to 100 million people, maybe even more. In peacetime those dead people would be consumers who can buy products and services and help expand the world economy and increase the amount of wealth created, that expanding economic activity in turn creates increasing tax revenue to keep infrastructure up to date etc...etc.... That is a lot of wealth and economic expansion that did not take place due to the war. Also warfare tends to destroy not only a country’s infrastructure but also entire cities, power plants, public transportation, roads, water delivery, food delivery etc.... etc.... World Wars are not good for the world economy, just as localized wars are not good for the economies of the countries involved in the fighting.
Government expenditure increase GDP, puts more money into the economy, and decreases unemployment. It spreads the wealth to more, thus creating an economy circle bigger and stronger. The money moves, economy grows. Has always been that way.
red
Yup. And those are Iran, Saudis, and other misc. Islam cult countries.
"Trump needs to say "If you give support to people who commit terrorist acts against Americans, our military will be tasked with killing you, and we won't care WHO you are. Kuwaiti banker, Saudi Prince, or President of a NATO member, we will have people coming to kill you"."
Exactly. We know who they are. As much as the CIA is maligned, it is still the best intelligence agency in the world. They know the bad actors and want to kill them. It's the politicians who say no. We have to negotiate with the misogynistic goat-humping Saudis and others in the ME because of why?
My solution: Place tactical nukes along their borders and tell them to straighten up or else. The next attack whether from an organization or a lone wolf from the States, if traced back to your Country...you're fried. I'm getting so tired of coddling these Islamist nations. They have done NOTHING good for the world, ever.
That’s Keynesian economics. Unsustainable.
Government is a parasite. Its expenditure does not add to the GDP, if anything it subtracts.
If what you were saying were true, then the government could make us all millionaires by taxing everybody at 100% and distributing the money to whomever it saw fit.
Broken Window Fallacy. Lots of work goes into fixing broken windows - glassmakers, installers, etc. So we can lower unemployment and improve living conditions by breaking every window we see.
War is good for the economy, peace is good for the economy, uncertainty is bad for the economy. If FDR’s fiscal policies weren’t atrocious we’d have gotten out of the Depression before WWII.
Permanent war has many problems, not the least of which being all the lives wasted on a war you apparently don’t want to win. Plus of course the economic “benefits” wear off as it becomes your new normal (we still managed to have down economic times during Viet Nam, and during the War on Terror).
A wartime economy can be very profitable for the little guy. The following is an entry from the US Economics History Ass.:
For the United States, World War II and the Great Depression constituted the most important economic event of the twentieth century. The war’s effects were varied and far-reaching. The war decisively ended the depression itself.
The federal government emerged from the war as a potent economic actor, able to regulate economic activity and to partially control the economy through spending and consumption.
American industry was revitalized by the war, and many sectors were by 1945 either sharply oriented to defense production (for example, aerospace and electronics) or completely dependent on it (atomic energy). The organized labor movement, strengthened by the war beyond even its depression-era height, became a major counterbalance to both the government and private industry. The war’s rapid scientific and technological changes continued and intensified trends begun during the Great Depression and created a permanent expectation of continued innovation on the part of many scientists, engineers, government officials and citizens. Similarly, the substantial increases in personal income and frequently, if not always, in quality of life during the war led many Americans to foresee permanent improvements to their material circumstances.
Finally, the war’s global scale severely damaged every major economy in the world except for the United States, which thus enjoyed unprecedented economic and political power after 1945.
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“If what you were saying were true, then the government could make us all millionaires by taxing everybody at 100% and distributing the money to whomever it saw fit.”
This is already happening. This is why the top 1% is paying all the bills now. And uncle sugar is not giving it back to the people but is creating a welfare state to control the citizens along with supplementing foreign trade and foreign welfare to bribe nations into pacificity. This is the reason the 54% of our economic balance are being paid for by the 46%. But the bad part is that those millionaires you mentioned, are being created by a false economy started by the government that is now about to implode on itself, as it was created by inflating the market to hide the lack of prosperity an the loss to the people. Just check unemployment numbers, not the ones that the feds use to hide their lack of and smoke and mirror prosperity. But the ones that actually indicate the people out of work that quit trying to look. So the government traded money for prosperity. And that money was then traded for national and international welfare to keep them in power.
red
It doesn’t make common sense let alone economic sense that war helps the economy. War destroys what man has created and uses up resources that could have been used for our betterment.
An interesting side question for me is how close were the world powers to running out of the raw materials to continue the war?
So practically no, and morally no thank you.
And the funny thing is liberals think Trump means war. I don’t know where they got that idea. It was Clinton that wanted war.
If we could only slay the foe that is Keynesian economics.
First, Redwood71, the article from Honorary Serb says it much better than I ever could. It is from Peter Ferrara:
Ferrara’s partial bio:
Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, Senior Advisor for Entitlement Reform and Budget Policy at the National Tax Limitation Foundation, General Counsel for the American Civil Rights Union, and Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. Served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush.
Now, given all of that, let’s take a look at what you’ve posted versus what I said:
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A wartime economy can be very profitable for the little guy.
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Broken windows can be very profitable for McGlass and Sons Glass Company.
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The following is an entry from the US Economics History Ass.:
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What do they think of Keynes and/or Paul Krugman? If they have any accolades for either of them, they suck and should die. Preferably of Communist-induced starvation.
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[Stuff about how the U.S. benefitted from WWII but nobody else did]
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I refer you back to my two “unsustainable” answers in reference to both Keynesian economics and the hypothesis that perpetual war is necessary and good. The collective global economy was made much worse.
Imagine what those 400,000 Americans and millions of Europeans could have done for the world’s economies if they hadn’t died, but instead had the yoke of governmental regulations removed.
Broken windows.
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This is already happening. [100% taxation and redistribution]
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You don’t seem to understand what I said.
Keynesian economics is essentially socialist. If you think socialism works and can “make us all millionaires”, then you’re on the wrong message board.
Stop advocating Keynes and/or believing anything in his economic theories. They are only believable to Marxists and that sad bunch.
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner.
You reference the making of millionaires. I didn’t say that. All I said is that by putting the people back to work, it stimulates the economy by spreading the wealth. Anyone that thinks everyone can be a millionaire is an idiot. However, the opportunity to make money during the was available for a number of reasons. Using smaller funds to buy failed businesses. Start up costs were low and smart buyers were able to have in place chances when the economy had an up turn.
Towards the end of the 1930s some business people watched the upsurge in military spending by some countries. The world was preparing for war and those that invested in companies that made in-demand products for the government stood to make lots of money. Companies dealing with shipping, military vehicles, textiles (for uniforms, tents, etc.), metals (copper, steel, aluminum and iron), shipping and petroleum products made a fortune. Well known companies that were bought at this time were John Deere, Reynolds Metals and Douglas Aircraft.
Another opportunity was there and used by people like John Templeton. He made his first killing by buying stocks at random which were under 1 dollar a share in 1942 and at danger of being de-listed in the NYSE. These were companies by in large which were badly managed and barely survived the Depression. Not only was the stock market low then, with the bad war news, but these were very low stocks in the totem pole. 3 years later they were tops, because the war time rationing made any business with semi functioning abilities and properties profitable.
But there was also the criminal element. Players like Joe Kennedy and Al Capone made millions in illegal booze after their establishment in their 20’s. While others, like the Gallo family were prepared to sell cheap wine for a bundle when the repeal came through.
It was not easy to make money in the Great Depression, but fairly easy to buy and hold — if you knew what you were doing. And if you tagged on to these people, you were swept up with them and the economy grew for everyone.
You listed some of the glassmakers. It’s still the broken windows fallacy, no matter how many companies you list, how much money they made, how many people they employed, etc. etc.
Unsustainable.
Read the article at the link I posted earlier that another commenter had posted before.
Keep loving Keynes, like all the liberals like Paul Krugman do.
I have to smile at your response. But here’s the bottom line: when everyone is working, the dollar moves. In the circle of its movements, everyone gets to touch it and use it. You can direct me to a number of names that have theories on economy, but all I have to do is point at our current one. We are in a total meltdown because people are out of work. It is causing financial and, also, political, setbacks for us, and therefore for the world. The world ones create more for us.
So if you think the current problem is sustainable, you aren’t following what’s happening. Hunger breads conflict. I’ve been in conflict. I would rather not have any more.
The same things happened during the depression because of a fake economy. But we wouldn’t have gotten out of it without putting people back to work. And after almost 80 years, we’re right back where we were. With a government created fake economy, unemploymenmt, trade deficits, and a debt we can’t contnue to sustain draining previously earmarked funds mishandled by a crroked, evil government.
So unless you’ve got some magic wand that can/will be used because the people to use it see it another way, right or wrong, then tell those people. I’m sure they are open to suggestions.
And I did mine without labeling you in any way. Thank you.
red
“What’s your opinion of a foreign policy based on permanent warfare? “
Not even Obama stopped these perpetual wars.
The USA is unique in that we are surrounded by oceans and can simply play more of an isolationist role, and we should.
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