Military spending is destroying the U.S. economy

In commemoration of Hamid Karzai visiting the White House, the blog TomDispatch, posted a powerful article by David Swanson, discussing the upcoming $ 33 billion dollar defense supplemental bill. A bill that will undoubtedly be passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by the President without much debate or controversy.

Although state governments are slashing budgets and laying off teachers and other services, the federal government never has any trouble finding the money to continue funding a war that seems to never end. While Opinione and other anti-imperial authors try to bring awareness of the issue to their readers, most Americans remain ignorant to the economic and social dangers, these never-ending defense supplemental bills are having on their standard of living.

For anyone wanting to break out of the information cocoons and echo chambers of the main stream media, reading the latest posting by TomDispatch contributor David Swanson would be the first step down a new road of discovery and information.

Let the journey begin!!!

An excerpt for the blog readers not willing to click on the link to the full posting.

As economists Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz demonstrated in The Three Trillion Dollar War, their book on the cost of the Iraq war alone, adding in debt payments on moneys borrowed to fight that war, long-term care for veterans wounded in it, the war's impact on energy prices, and other macroeconomic impacts, the current tax bill for the Iraq War must be at least tripled and probably quadrupled or more to arrive at its real long-term cost. (Similarly, the cost in lives must be multiplied by all those lives that could have been saved through other, better uses of the same funding.) The same obviously applies to the Afghan War.

The fact is that military spending is destroying the U.S. economy. An excellent report from the National Priorities Project, “Security Spending Primer," provides a summary of research that supports these basic and well-documented facts:

*Investing public dollars in the military produces fewer jobs than cutting taxes.

*Cutting taxes produces fewer jobs than investing public dollars in any of these areas: healthcare, education, mass transit, or construction for home weatherization and infrastructural repair.

*Investing public dollars in mass transit or education produces more than twice as many jobs as investing in the military.

*Investing public dollars in education produces better paying jobs than investing in the military or cutting taxes.

*Investing public dollars in any of these areas: healthcare, education, mass transit, construction for home weatherization and infrastructural repair has a larger direct and indirect economic impact than investing in the military or cutting taxes.