MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Hits of the Day
Of Arms and the Man: War-Profiteers and Progressives Make Common Cause for Obama
By A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 03/12/2011 - 9:22pm |Do you want to know why Barack Obama will be re-elected President of the United States?
URL:
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2101-arms-and-the-man-war-profiteering-bolsters-obamas-re-election.html
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Comments
I love it LULU.
by cmaukonen on Sat, 03/12/2011 - 11:12pm
Excellent discussion with facts indisputable.
However...
It misses a significant point.
The US is a consumer nation with 25% to 30% with its population unemployed or underemployed. And that's put severe financial distress, due to a shriveled tax base, on the federal government as well as State an local governments. Couple that with the Bailed Out Banks (BOBs) sitting pretty because the taxpayer bailed their sorry asses out of the financial mess they drug us all into and refusing to lend out money to spur the economy and the consumer industrial might is on the last ship sailing out of port, the only work available is in the service sector that pays somewhere in the neighborhood of minimum wage and makes every attempt to work people less than 40 hours a week so they don't have to pay out benefits. And let's not forget the GOPer's are hellbent on cutting back on any initiative necessary for the government to employ in turning the economy around too.
So the only quick alternative Obama has that Congress will go along with is to export our military arms industry to the world. Face it!, it's fact not fiction! Defense contract work pays excellent wages with benefits, many parts are unionized, they parcel out specialized work to sub-contractors which creates even more local employment and economic activity and when the finished product is delivered, it includes technical support staff to keep the system functioning within specifications until the clients personnel is capable of doing the tasks themselves.
It's the only win-win situation at the moment on the table that gets more people back to work with decent wages and benefits...middle-class wages and benefits no less... and brings in cold hard cash to spur the economy again.
I would rather see the US going in another direction with other economic options on the table capable of getting more people back to work with decent wages and benefits so the public can get back on their own feet, but arms sales is the only viable option Obama has that he can get unanimous Congressional approval on.
by Beetlejuice on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 9:44am
What you point out is completely correct as far as I can see. In response to your lsat paragraph I will add the following which goes along with a thought I expressed on another thread. I said in a comment somewhere recently that the only thing American industry still excels at is the production of arms. I believe a strong case could be made for why that is true is that the American government has always followed a policy with regards to weapons of “Buy American”. Obviously the Pentagon is not going allow contractors to send the blueprints of an F-22 to China and pay them to build it there just because they will do it for less, and then follow up by sending r&d there, and then some years down the line finding itself in the position of not having a manufacturing base that can build its own fighter jets. The work has stayed here and American industry has produced the cutting edge product. [No pun intended but I kind of like it]
The fact seems to be that in this specialized case the government has followed a policy which has had the same affect as protective trade laws. They have supplied the demand but also demanded that it be met by American industry. American industry has succeeded in meeting that demand and produced manufactured goods that other countries will pay dearly for.
The American public still provides all the demand needed to support a domestic industry that would provide consumer goods. If restrictions had been placed on outside supply of that demand we would almost certainly be paying somewhat higher prices for those goods but so many more people would be so much more productively employed that I think our over-all economy would be much stronger. If and when our economy recovers I do not expect anyone with the power to do so to make the decision to quit the disastrous policy of profiteering through the business of arming the whole damned world.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 12:02pm
The article is enough to shame a nation for having put their most cherished assets in the war monger's basket and short changing other venues simply because of lower profit expectations. I am a part of the war material effort, but that's because the non-military job market has never been very stable...purely based on finicky customer preferences that changes with the wind on any given day. Whereas, defense contract work is always stable with moderate to excellent salaries and benefits coupled with long term contracts and assignments to locales off shore. It would have been nice to have a working profession in the US that was dependable, but it was sacrificed for profit at the expense of the workers. So the defense industry was always being fertilized by the economic winds of the domestic markets.
by Beetlejuice on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 1:33pm