THE DAILY BEAST: But behind those issues—behind the ads and candidates’ speeches, behind the rhetoric about “out-of-control” government spending—there lurks a hidden, less-talked-about issue: the cost of the ongoing wars.
Already, we’ve spent more than $1 trillion in Iraq, not counting the $700 billion consumed each year by the Pentagon budget. And spending in Iraq and Afghanistan now comes to more than $3 billion weekly, making the wars a major reason for record-level budget deficits.
Two years ago, Joseph Stiglitz and I published The Three Trillion Dollar War in which we estimated that the budgetary and economic costs of the war would reach $3 trillion. Taking new numbers into account, however, we now believe that our initial estimate was far too conservative—the cost of the wars will reach between $4 trillion and $6 trillion…. (more)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Unnecessary wars distort the economy, during normal times diverting productivity from socially beneficial spending to waste, not to mention the tragic loss of lives on both sides. Ironically, during times such as now of a Great Recession, they may have a perversely beneficial effect in that they generate jobs and wages. Let us hasten to add that we can do this in a far better way through expenditures on infrastructure and tax relief for the lower and middle classes.
There has been a good deal of research on the impact of military spending on job creation vs. the impact of civilian spending (including tax breaks) on job creation. The military is one of the most inefficient ways to create jobs. See., e.g., http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/071001-jobcreation.pdf Here is a portion of their second table (much more details are included in the chart but these are the major numbers ranked from least job producing to most):
Jobs Created through $1 Billion in New Spending: Comparison of Alternative Spending Targets
defense 8,555
tax cuts for personal consumption 10,779
construction for home weatherization/ infrastructure 12,804
health care 12,883
education 17,687
mass transit 19,795
In addition, by spending on military instead of civilian needs we miss opportunities to make our lives better. For example, the U.S. is one of the largest spenders on robotics, but it is almost all military for things like drones. In Japan they are creating robots to be butlers, servants, pets for the elderly. This is one example of many where focus on war undermines focus on improving our lives. We do get derivative benefits from military technology, but it is happenstance as the intent is to make better weapons and war materials. What a waste of human intelligence!