Military Spending

Any government spending can serve as an economic stimulus.  Where the spending is directed impacts various segments of the economy differently.  The government spends to subsidize many different industries which impact the overall economy, from energy to agriculture, and social spending to military spending.  One of the more recent and largest examples is the joint Bush/Obama state intervention in the financial industry.  This sort of deregulation of markets, combined with subsidies and state intervention, has had a stark impact on the economy.  It provides investors the incentive to take risks knowing hefty returns will be privatized and losses, even to the extent of an economic collapse, will be socialized.  With the increase in spending, mostly through state intervention to save the industry, we have seen an improvement in the overall economy.  However, when pressed, even President Obama acknowledges that the overwhelming majority of the economic recovery has gone to the top half of 1%, with some minor spill over to high-level professionals.  By large, via studies from 'The State of Working America', working families are worse off today than they were in the early 90s, and even worse yet than the same class of working families in the 1970s.  They conclude, "High profitability, higher return on capital, and higher CEO pay, may be the only payoff or concrete sign of accomplishment from 16 years of transition to a more deregulated economy."  The President concedes this as if it's an unfortunate and somewhat puzzling outcome, but it's very much by design.  This example is neoliberalism in a nutshell.  By definition: a policy model that transfers control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector.

There was a major lesson learned during WWII: Capitalism is not a viable economic system.  During the war, the US adopted a semi-command economy, state control and allocation of resources, which was extremely successful and efficient, and pulled the US out of the depression.  It was discovered there is a way to maintain something remotely like a capitalistic system, mainly with massive state subsidy, direction, and control.  That's why those often most vocally in favor of free market principles are also most in favor of subsidies to advanced industry, including via the military.  It's seemingly a contradiction, but there's an underlying theme.  The miracles of the free market must only apply to the poor.  Wealth and profit must be closely managed and protected by state intervention.

You've probably heard me say it bunch of times, but again, military spending is largely a subsidy to high tech industry.  Risk, research, and development are all socialized, then usable technology is passed to advanced industry through huge acts of privatization.  The telecommunications industry, among innumerable illustrations, is a prime example of state intervention which contributed heavily towards the creation of the industry and has sustained it with a vast transfer of public resources to private profit.  The internet, satellites, fiber optics, etc. are all straight from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).  The best illustration within telecommunications is the semiconductor industry, which was saved from collapse in the 1980s by massive Reaganite intervention, all while his administration was claiming a passion for the miracles of the free market, as a lesson in personal responsibility to the poor.  There's bipartisan agreement on these policies, too.  In the 90s, Bill Clinton stood in a Boeing terminal and preached "the gospel of free markets" as described by the NY Times, offering his "grand vision of a free market future" at an APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting in Seattle.  He gave Boeing as the prime example of "the gospel of the free markets".  What he neglected to mention, of course, is that Boeing was the beneficiary of large scale state intervention and would not have existed without massive direct and indirect subsidy by way of crucial technology borrowed from the state sector.  Meanwhile, the Clinton administration gutted welfare spending using the "welfare queen" trope popularized by Reagan.

This isn't to say that state intervention and subsidies to high tech industry through military spending are an altogether bad thing.  In fact, these policies have given the US a commanding lead in the development of many new technologies the industry enjoys, both in hardware and software.  That's an enormous success considering it's been openly stated by the business press that high tech industry could not have survived an unsubsidized, competitive, free market enterprise economy.  The true damage occurs when this spending becomes excessive and is combined with tax cuts to the rich and drastic cuts to social spending.  At these extremes, slashing funding to everything which does not contribute directly to profit making, the use of intervention and subsidies becomes a method for direct redistribution of wealth from public resources to private profit, sharply widening inequality.  Redistribution of wealth in the other direction, as in social spending, also helps the economy, but it works to aid people in becoming consumers who's only contribution to profit-making is by providing their cheap labor, meaning the economic advantages only filter to corporations indirectly.  This type of wealth redistribution also has a democratizing effect, where people become more involved in policy discussion when they're seeing actual benefits to their contribution, which is dangerous to private power.  Military spending has none of these defects.  It's a direct gift to corporations.  That's why it's necessary to use "security" to define the purpose of military spending and not "subsidy".  You limit democratic participation when the population can't feel their contributions and aren't aware that they're largely responsible for the success of the economy, reliant on both their labor and through state intervention, otherwise they might start demanding something in return.  Like, you know, a movement towards a greater commitment to social spending.  So, instead, you create foreign devils to fear, and preach the need to direct those funds towards "defense" which is an easy sell compared to "subsidy".

To deal with the resulting overflow of the superfluous population, not contributing to profit making, who are seen as a drain on a society that refuses to aid them in any way, you just build prisons. In 1994, Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the largest crime bill in history, which allocated $10 billion for prison construction, expanded the death penalty, and eliminated federal funding for inmate education. The act intensified police surveillance and racial profiling, and locked up millions for nonviolent offenses, such as drug possession. It helped usher in the era of mass incarceration that devastated communities of color.  All of which was really a step up from the already severely damaging Reagan/Bush "War on Drugs" political agenda.  In a system where you're trying to limit public participation and any cost to society that isn't a direct handout to private profit, you tend to treat the public as a threat, as an enemy.  They need to be divided, atomized, or altogether gotten rid of, whether that's locked in prison, sat in front of the tv, sent as an occupying force to protect foreign investments, arguing with one another over religious objections, it doesn't matter.  As the democratic theorist Walter Lippmann wrote, "the public must be put in their place."  You need to protect profit from "the roar and trampling of the bewildered herd."

Donald Trump claiming the military is in shambles and the US needs a re-commitment to military spending is a blatant lie.  The US dwarfs the rest of the world in military spending, marking 34% of the world's total military spending, allotting more than the next 7 nations combined.  If you ask troops, and I would recommend you read Winter Soldier, Iraq and Afghanistan; it can be a nightmare for troops trying to receive the proper equipment to fight wars many of the troops don't agree with or believe in.  Once they're home, often facing both mental and physical trauma, they can't even find proper health care through the VA.  So, it's great if you support the military, and specifically the troops, but the majority of the spending isn't going to troops.  It's going to R&D for new technology and it comes at the cost of diminished social spending.  When Trump makes the claim that we need to expand our nuclear capacity, at a cost of $1 trillion over the decade, it's essentially just a call for a greater transfer of wealth from the public resources to private profit.  It's right in line with tax policy that places a greater burden for sustaining the society on the lower and middle classes by reducing tax rates for the wealthy.  He's just using the military as cover for an increased subsidy to advanced industry.  In essence, discipline for the defenseless poor, but a powerful nanny state for the rich and privileged.  Just another method of: a policy model that transfers control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector.  Neoliberalism.