August 1st, 2009 by Jon Taplin
If ever we needed evidence of the Cost of Empire, Floyd Norris’s scary chart of Durable Goods Production from the U.S. Economy is it.
We have so hollowed out our industrial plant that the only thing we are now producing is weapons of war. The great British Historian Arnold Toynbee’s theory about the decline of the Roman Empire has lessons for our current age.
The economy of the Empire was basically a Raubwirtschaft or plunder economy based on looting existing resources rather than producing anything new. The Empire relied on booty from conquered territories (this source of revenue ending, of course, with the end of Roman territorial expansion) or on a pattern of tax collection that drove small-scale farmers into destitution (and onto a dole that required even more exactions upon those who could not escape taxation), or into dependency upon a landed élite exempt from taxation. With the cessation of tribute from conquered territories, the full cost of their military machine had to be borne by the citizenry.
This I know. We cannot continue on this course of decline. While many of the elite escape taxation with their brilliant “tax shelter” accountants, the middle class (Rome’s “small scale farmers”) are being asked to shoulder the economic burden of empire.
Shortly after the election President Obama made it clear that the chokehold of the Military Industrial Complex over our economy was not going to change on his watch–”To ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad, we all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest military on the planet.” After all, with 4% of the world’s people why shouldn’t we spend 45% of the world’s military spending?
While Obama makes symbolic cuts in the Military budget, the House threw in 550 new earmarks into a $636 Billion Military Budget. Lyndon Johnson thought we could have both Guns and Butter, but he was wrong. Both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were afraid to take on the Military Industrial Complex that the Republicans have always favored. Eisenhower was right that continuing on this disastrous course is a form of generational theft. According to Catherine Lutz the U.S. Military has “909 military facilities in 46 countries and territories.” This is truly insane. We need to bring the personnel on these bases home and start selling off the precious foreign real estate to help liquidate our massive debt.
I have only one question–Where is the national politician with the courage to say we no longer have to act as the unpaid policeman of the world?
August 1st, 2009 by Jon Taplin
If ever we needed evidence of the Cost of Empire, Floyd Norris’s scary chart of Durable Goods Production from the U.S. Economy is it.
We have so hollowed out our industrial plant that the only thing we are now producing is weapons of war. The great British Historian Arnold Toynbee’s theory about the decline of the Roman Empire has lessons for our current age.
The economy of the Empire was basically a Raubwirtschaft or plunder economy based on looting existing resources rather than producing anything new. The Empire relied on booty from conquered territories (this source of revenue ending, of course, with the end of Roman territorial expansion) or on a pattern of tax collection that drove small-scale farmers into destitution (and onto a dole that required even more exactions upon those who could not escape taxation), or into dependency upon a landed élite exempt from taxation. With the cessation of tribute from conquered territories, the full cost of their military machine had to be borne by the citizenry.
This I know. We cannot continue on this course of decline. While many of the elite escape taxation with their brilliant “tax shelter” accountants, the middle class (Rome’s “small scale farmers”) are being asked to shoulder the economic burden of empire.
Shortly after the election President Obama made it clear that the chokehold of the Military Industrial Complex over our economy was not going to change on his watch–”To ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad, we all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest military on the planet.” After all, with 4% of the world’s people why shouldn’t we spend 45% of the world’s military spending?
While Obama makes symbolic cuts in the Military budget, the House threw in 550 new earmarks into a $636 Billion Military Budget. Lyndon Johnson thought we could have both Guns and Butter, but he was wrong. Both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were afraid to take on the Military Industrial Complex that the Republicans have always favored. Eisenhower was right that continuing on this disastrous course is a form of generational theft. According to Catherine Lutz the U.S. Military has “909 military facilities in 46 countries and territories.” This is truly insane. We need to bring the personnel on these bases home and start selling off the precious foreign real estate to help liquidate our massive debt.
I have only one question–Where is the national politician with the courage to say we no longer have to act as the unpaid policeman of the world?
America should fight all enemies the quickest possible way with massive air strikes and missiles that we already have in stock.
The enemy may recover, but it will be a very slow recovery and most if not all of their weapons will be destroyed.
We have a big problem with countries around the world buying and selling weapons of mass destruction.
The terrorist enemy lives and hides among civilians; the unwanted causalities of war.
These civilians need to learn to fight unwanted intruders for their own freedom.
Oh well, it’s only WAR AS USUAL.
Very interesting, thanks for the information.
“Where is the national politician with the courage to say we no longer have to act as the unpaid policeman of the world?”
We are not necessarily “unpaid.” The U.S. dollar’s hegemony is backed by the world’s largest military. Offering the world’s safest investments, U.S. treasuries, the U.S. benefits enormously in lowered borrowing costs, both public and private. One of the primary reasons the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency is a result of U.S. military and concomitant economic success post WWII.
Jon, that’ll happen AS SOON as you demand a Balanced Budget Amendment. It is the logical way out.
When deficit spending is impossible, there are real guns and butter choices. It will fundamentally alter how we view government spending.
But looking at your chart, without liberals suddenly supporting a BBA, you have to accept now that the number won’t likely ever go below $400B in your lifetime.
Re-carve the pie chart that dictates defense priorities by, for example, restricting defense needs to the needs stated by responsible officials under democratic control; ergo eliminate irresponsible pork-barreling by such as John Murtha with his 70+ constituent-pleasing earmarks; move as much defense R&D as possible swiftly into private-sector R&D, consistent with the security interest; minimize post-service costs by emphasizing the prevention of physical trauma and pschological trauma in theatre; capture the market value of domestically developed weapons systems no longer threatening of U.S. security but useful to trusted allies abroad; bring up all Americans to valorize peacekeeping above the profession of arms, and create a specially trained corps of experts to make good those values.
All these things are happening, fitfully. Were they pulled together into one finely woven cable they could suspend a mighty bridge. The rest would just spark off into the drink like glowing useless rivets.
No politician wants to confront the large number of current and former employees of the military industry. It provides a job and benefits for people otherwise doomed to some depressed town. One of the last secure jobs in America.
I would like to see a decrease, but not without some sound economic approaches for increasing other industries.
Sadly in the NYT chart there is no indication of military exports vs internal consumption. That data would have been interesting as well.
I suggest you all read the classic:
“How to Lie with Statistics”
by Darrell Huff and Irving Geis
(Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249162319&sr=8-1 )
This is such an excellent example of the use of misleading charts.
Likely it’s right that the planet won’t support guns and butter.
But people with guns can take from those that don’t.
And I have to wonder: how many of the engineers and biologists and materials science and logistics people and career officers and the rest of that “constituency,” who feed off the Real Wealth, the kind that those small farmers have created and that’s on its way to dissipation on the surface of one bubble after another — how many of them would have any interest in taking part in the dislocation and misery that is affecting the people who in old Rome would have spent their days at the Coliseum and Circus Maximus? They’ve got a steady gig, career military or Civil Service or middle management and machinist and CADCAMer with one of the Great American War Companies. They’ve tacitly or patently busted their humps to tilt the table so all the piles of money run down to their end.
So why, pray tell, would they give up “good paying middle class jobs” figuring out really neat new ways to blow things up and ventilate them, to do stupid production stuff like shit-to-methane conversions or windmills or water wheels or those oscillating cylinders where the water flows quickly by or another couple of percentage points of photon capture in a solar panel? And as I write, you know the Really Smart Weapons Boys are just chortling over the fun they can have “hardening” a Smart Grid if it ever comes to pass, and figuring out ways to get past their hard-ons to trash that same grid. Remember Nuclear Ali, the “father” of the Paki nuclear bombs? Busily selling his knowledge and equipment and all to the next set of egomaniacal would-be kelptocrats in some other country that will be gutted of wealth to let the shits who are willing to USE the power of armed force to “take over.”
Yeah, Mr. Conto, there are a lot of people who “lie with statistics,” including the RAND people and our senior military types who lied to Congress and the rest of us about the “Bomber Gap” and the “Missile Gap” and the “Window of Vulnerability.” You got a particular beef with the charts presented, or the ones our Red Congressmen and Senators and their Blue Dog Buddies are putting up to “prove” that any change in the sick sickness-payment system will be the end of the Republic?
Perhaps a more apt discussion would be what would happen if a president, any president tried to rein in the military. What general would go down in history with the expression “Crossing the Potomac” marking the foundation of the First American Empire?
“Where is the national politician with the courage to say we no longer have to act as the unpaid policeman of the world?”
When the American public accepts that withdrawal is not surrender of the world peace, such that it is, that global presence has provided.
It isn’t about Murtha. It isn’t about any one group. It is about fear. The Romans feared the tribes at their borders. Who wouldn’t after watching the circuses that brought the worst and best it could find to die in the arena?
We’re not that far gone or we have a ways yet to go. But yes, look at any US budget and the MIC costs are disproportionate to the point of addiction.
Which is precisely the condition fear creates.
The US Dollar is not backed by gold. It is backed by F-16’s.
As long as the US Dollar remains the standard reserve currency, as well as the usual means of exchange for purchasing oil, American hegemony is assured.
Of course, failed economic and currency policy is putting this entire equation into question. As the deficits (and national debt) rise, the willingness of the giants like China to continue to finance that debt falls. Ultimately, the entire paradigm will collapse. The American Empire will go the way of all previous empires.
Yeah, but it’s also about Murtha. Murtha goes very much to the point. As long as he remains in service we are not serious.
Murtha is the yet undead embodiment of the MIC, a near-perfect blend of congressional suborning and importuning. It breathes but to stalk amidst us, drawing our breath unto its last. Godzilla vs. Murtha!
“The American Empire will go the way of all previous empires.”
Nah. America got to be where it is by never doing it the way previous empires did.
America is a democracy. At it’s very core it is the power of a free people who believe it is their destiny to be great not by decree but by willing it to be so.
And its F-22s.
“…Murtha…tha monstah…
…is attacking the City….
…Tokyo is…trembling…”
[paraphrase of the late Raymond Burr]
Come on, len. Ef the 22’s. But let’s dump the grafting chumps like Murtha too. And then let’s go. We’ve got so much to do!
You _do_ understand that the chart represents percentage change over time?
I’m happy to see ‘em scrapped, Hugo. I know they’ll be replaced with something else. One strategic advantage the US won’t give up is air superiority. Get used to that one, but we’re already moving to bots that are cheaper. Ain’t miniturization grand? Thank the space program.
We do have much to do. No quarrel. All I’m saying is getting more Americans behind that means going after that fear they’ve clung to since WWII when they finally realized what isolationism in the face of real monsters meant.
The self-perpetuating money black hole effect of the MIC and Chinese debt are tied like cement blocks to our economic feet when we ought to be engineering project such as Rick describes.
Corruption? Where? Really???? Can I get some too? Should I turn in the clunker and let them scrap metal the engines or store it and wait ten years for the antique status to kick in with higher value because the government made them artificially rare? Decisions! Decisions!
It didn’t take long for our generation to go from Beam me up, Scotty to Buy me up, Obama!
As a non-american reading an american whining about the cost of being the unpaid policeman of the world, I’d like to express some outrage.
First off, your recent police actions were taken unilaterally, despite dissent among the UN, NATO, the G8, you name it. That’s called disenfranchising people, and destroys democracy.
America has tried to bill it’s “allies,” sometimes successfully, for what it unilaterally perceives as their share of the police work. So now we add taxation without representation to your actions.
To claim that war machine of yours has any other function than to secure your american living standards by wresting control of the basic resources and markets from independent states, is ludicrous. Only in america is that lie still believed.
(In case I need to spell it out: you are already plundering, and funnelling the spoils of war back into your national economy throught such vehicles as the firm Haliburton. Come off it, you are using those guns you make to steal. You are “helping” people who don’t want or trust your help. How does this honour the blood of your dead soldiers?)
So stop cheering “praise Obama!”, electing a descent fellow does not automatically erase the evils your rogue state has committed. You need to effect reparation to deserve the trust of your allies again. You need to fix the imperialist bent of the strong right wing elements in your country and start being a productive world partner. After Obama, you will elect a republican again, and they’ll go right on doing what they’ve done since Nixon. Again.
By now I’m sure you’re reading this and saying “I’m not the guy responsible, nothing I can do about it.” … The people responsible for letting Bush / Cheney do their deeds, the people with a say, the people funding this terror machine, are clearly outlined in the first three words of a document you may or may not have heard about. It starts with “We The People…”
Shortly after the election President Obama made it clear that the chokehold of the Military Industrial Complex over our economy was not going to change on his watch–”To ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad, we all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest military on the planet.”
As Taplin points out: you can’t sustain this forever. Police yourself now, while we are still all asking nicely.
Ron Paul has been addressing this problem for decades–we can’t afford to be the world’s policeman, and we were never meant to meddle in the world’s affairs anyway
Enlightening analysis, Jon, as always. The similarity of Roman and U.S. tax treatment of the wealthy is particularly troubling.
I agree with everything you say about the military-industrial complex and its strangle-hold on the American economy. But right this minute, we are busy breaking the strangle-hold of the medical-insurance-pharmaceutical complex. If we can get universal health care, then we can focus on the rest of the economy, including the MIC.
@ Len — I share your recognition of the importance of democracy. But I suspect that democracy in America is becoming dysfunctional. The success or failure of the Obama administration will be a good indicator.
Think about the following combination — a dysfunctional democracy, a hollowed-out industrial base, a broken health care system, and an unjust tax system. That would be a machine with all the wheels fallen off, including the steering wheel.
“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas… And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”
Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree
Nobody denies that we need a military.
The fact that we need a military does not mean that everything the military does or buys, or everything the military industry builds and sells, is keeping us safe.
I would hope that, after the gigantic lie known as Operation Enduring Freedom, we would have learned that.
Could you give a cite for the Toynbee quote, please? I’m having trouble looking it up.
My growing fear, over the past months watching as President Obama violates one campaign pledge after another, and carries on President Bush’s secrecy, his wars, his assertion of presidential fiat power, is: What if President Obama is not just another lying politician? What if he is turning into Bush III not because he wants to, but because he has no other choice?
What if the President has only the slightest ability to nudge the Defense Industries, the Security Apparatus?
If the President is helpless, then it’s for sure the rest of us are.
And where would that leave us? And the rest of the world?
Jeremy,
A propos your apposite quote from Thomas Friedman, Ed McCracken, CEO of the erstwhile Silicon Graphics, said that his company would not have existed had it not been for sim contracts from NASA and the brainbusting challenges they presented.
pond,
The C-in-C and Congress together have enormous power over the direction of DoD.
Hugo,
And therefore the real question is, who has enormous influence over Congress?
Well aimed, Dan. The force that countervails the corrupting influences to which you refer always should be the President himself.
Um… I think your facts don’t lead to your conclusion.
When I first looked at the chart, I thought it was showing something like “total overall economic production by military & nonmilitary sources”, which would indeed support your case. But it’s actually “percentage growth of durable goods shipments of military/nonmilitary sectors”. Which means that yes, the military has grown, and the non-military sector has shrunk — but the conclusion that “we’ve hollowed out our industrial plant”, is not supported.
Yes, the growth of the military spending is greatly increased — but I’d point out that’s since 2000, which basically means from a point just prior to a major war, through a major war. It’s probably going to be exaggeratedly large — although I will not deny that it’s disturbing to me that it’s *this* large, and has continued into 2009.
And we are going through a recession (during a war — a pretty odd combination, historically speaking) which means that total durable good shipments would naturally decrease. Durable goods are items that don’t wear out for a minimum of 3 years, which means that they’re often expensive items. The country’s been going through a (hopefully long term) change towards frugality, meaning that the current zeitgeist is that if you’ve got something which isn’t broken, you make do instead of buying another. So a reduction in purchased durable goods during a recession is to be expected!
I think that watching out to make sure that our economic base isn’t becoming a hollow shell is laudable, but this chart isn’t anything like absolute proof of that.
I think what Mr. Conto above was gently trying to point out is that the chart presented in no way supports the (grossly false) assertion that “the only thing we are now producing is weapons of war.” It’s a percentage growth chart, which tells you nothing about absolute values. If you looked at current values for durable goods shipments, you’d see that 92% are non-military. Further, the chart is based on nominal dollars without inflation-adjustment, which likely exaggerates the trends.
Well, “Rise and Fall” pretty much predicted this. It’s how all empires end. Trying to defend their turf til they spend everything they’ve got doing so.
Pat,
“Police yourself now, while we are still all asking nicely.”
Don’t be ridiculous.
“Police” your own damn self. As for me, I’ll contract with my collective to do the enforcement, thank you. Don’t you be ridiculous. Our pigs can police without pork. We just need to hold them to it. Most of them would prefer to be held to this standard, whether they police at home or abroad.
donna,
Ah, the “Rise and Fall” schtick. The thing about the Rise&Fall is, that you get to predetermine that we are falling, not rising. It must feel very empowering for you. How do you know that we are in the “Fall” of our year? Might we as easily be in our Spring, poised for our next outbreak of prosperity at home and dominance overseas? The horror! The horror…
Read this stuff here and there and everywheres and you have to see why the mainstream in this country is headed up in its comfortable barrel, headed right over the falls, taking the rest of the river with it.
I especially like Mr. Meyers’ solution, “overwheming air power.” Looky how well them Reapers and Predators and their Hellfires and Brimstones are doing, yep! Yep, that’s proven to be The Solution since Seversky peddled the idea early in the last century. Worked just great, hasn’t it? Oh, I forget, It Would Have Worked if only the generals had been really turned loose now by the cowardly Pinko liberal fascist left-leaning fifth columnists, right? Couldn’t get even Tricky Dick to Bomb, Bomb, Bomb the Commie Gooks back into the Stone Age, despite LeMays’s best efforts. I personally keep waiting for Seven Days In May.
What’s the goal, folks? Just “more” of what there is for “us,” which really ends up being “more” for the few that have figured out how to rape the system and the future, and starvation wages for the rest? What an ignorant, hokey-pokey bunch we are.
“We’re Number One! We’re Number One!”
“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the ONLY thing!”
“Mission Accomplished!”
Nice word, “Raubwirtschaft.” They didn’t teach that bit of vocabulary in my German 1 and 2 classes. If you integrate the whole picture, economy, topsoil, species, “human-affected climate change,” Funny Munny-bubbles, militarization, “patriotism,” bailouts and stimulussssess, whattyagot? Not much of a future. But with a few niches for a few predators and parasites to keep bleeding the rest of us until the last bit of lifeblood is gone.
I wonder what my grandkids’ share of the national debt, which by some measures is pushing $12 trillion, will be. But hey, who gives a shit? I’ll be smoked before then! And unless your biotech folks figure out how to stop all free radicals and terminate apoptosis, you will be too.
We’re spending our children’s inheritance. Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaa!
Fucking stupid species.
Hey, JTM, I thougth Bill Myers’s solution was pretty funny too. Time for a good old Randy Newman singalong!
o/~No one likes us
I don’t know why
We may not be perfect
Though heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let’s drop the big one,
And see what happens. 0/~
We’ll save Australia
Don’t wanna hurt no kangaroo
We’ll build an All American amusement park there
They got surfin’ too!
Lots of slams on Prof. Taplin’s choice of Powerpoints, but any of you charmers want to argue the actual point about an industrial base that with outsourcing has pretty much left war materiel as the major remaining SIC (or is that SICK) category, or are you just doing the trial attorney’s impeachment thing and leaving it at that? (You know — it doesn’t matter if the statement is true, if you can get the jury to think there’s a fake exhibit on the easel.)
No graphs with “misleading’ or “flat wrong” statistics, and of course if you are arguing that debt is a GOOD thing, no reason to think that any of the rapidly changing data fields is anything other than lies by whoever you or you or the other guy over there don’t agree with or want to try to “make a liar out of.” Right?
And another interesting link, for those who want data spelled out by the steely-eyed industrial warriors who want to bend every Real Wealth dollar to the Most Important Task of being Ready To Fight And Kill or at least Hold The Dominant Market Share In Every “Defence” Category. It’s a little dated, and there are no pretty pictures, but it’s so typical of the genre that it makes for a fascinating End-of-The-Great-American-Enlightenment-Experiment-With-Democracy read. Not too hard to find more up-to-date “anal-ysis” on the same topic, making the same argument that “in pursuit of ‘defense,’ no sacrifice by the ordinary people and no outrageous fraud and no bottomless transfer of Real Wealth to the people making a good living out of churning the fear machine and keeping the status quo going.”
Along the same line: Reagan’s people wanted the destabilizing first-strike Peacekeeper so bad, they pushed a bunch of “basing options” that would have transferred the nation’s wealth to “defense” and the construction industry. The Big Bird option was a fleet of hundreds of 747-sized aircraft “Made In The USA” of course, each with a peacekeeper shoved up its ass. To keep the pesky Rooskies from a take-out first strike, a third of them had to be in the air all the time. And to satisfy the games theorists and statisticians at RAND and other Brain Trusts that enough airfields capable of serving these behemoths would be on the ground in numbers big enough to confuse the Rooskie target-pickers, there had to be a 10- or 15,000 foot concrete runway on a grid of like 20-mile centers all across the entire US of A. Think the construction industry and cement organizations weren’t all over that, with the predecessors to Mr. Murtha. And it would have only cost, to “protect the land-based arm of the strategic missile triad,” the entire GDP of the country for a year or two. The fun part was the other warfare that went on in the Land Of Fraudulent Procurement with non-Big Bird program managers and their masters in the non-selected “industries” fighting tooth and nail to protect THEIR piece of the scam while not seeming too, ah, their-program-partisan to still call themselves “patriots.”
And it’s so cool, the stuff that finds its way into searchability on the web. Here’s a neat doc on the Peacekeeper, and a lot of the stuff that went on around that Big Idea. The same kind of document, in the same deadly-dry accountant’s monotone and with a strong flavor of Consumer Reports and Mechanics Illustrated, is regularly generated for all the other thousands of Weapons Systems and wannabes in and possibly coming into “our” arsenals.
The whole premise is just futile, and stupid, and dead-end for this species. But hey, a few of us will have some great careers and financial success by playing this particular game.
I write here because we’d all be better off if you americans joined the world prosperity trusteeship, instead to sticking to your “my country, right or wrong” views.
@Morgan Warstler
It think you may underestimate the true number of industrialized and militarized countries there are out there, in this early 21st century.
I know your US media focuses on North Korean and middle-eastern potential for terrorism, and that your financial quarter seems to keep an eye out for China, as it owns more american dollars than you do.
But perhaps you’re one of those who scoffs at China’s military potential, imagining it to have stayed at it’s 1980 level backwardness, despite their greatly improved sources of funding and manufacture.
Perhaps you’ve failed to notice that the EU, as a whole, has a much more self-reliant and trade balanced economy than the USs, and while their military industrial potential remains smaller than yours, and their people clamour for peace, their potential geopolitical weight is much heftier than the current span of their sphere of influence might account for.
Then there are players such as India, Russia, the elements of the ex-soviet block not represented by Russia, and the scramble for positioning in Africa, which the US has all but opted out on, in it’s current investment in the middle-east. Even Japan now has an army and a fleet… and can probably well defend their fishing fleet’s access to any given ocean they feel like emptying.
Or perhaps you’ve failed to notice that, as pond pointed out, Obama “violates one campaign pledge after another.” With the coming of the Obama craze, the fear of America standing alone seems to have left your nation. Do you really think disappointing the hopes of literally hundreds of million foreign nationals, for solutions to issues of life, death & livelihood, born of true international cooperation; do you think this is a healthy thing? Or a trifle you can afford to ignore?
Or maybe you simply don’t put a proper economic price on the title of “superpower,” and the influence a smaller player stands to gain by taking you down a peg. Or the sheer desperate survival necessity of some smaller players to do what Al-Qaida has done: prove that you can be touched.
Remember that even small players, in remote corners of the world, may have issues, motivations and a need for credibility that have nothing to do with you, yet be forced to manifest there anger at you simply because you are there, militarily or commercially, in their home territory.
In their faces, yet oblivious to their existence.
Your isolation and self-ascribed world police mandate makes you a target many cannot resist. But the price to pay in such a conflict, however it may materialize, would be both bloody and costly not merely for the US but for the entire industrialized world.
My country very much included, btw. Just look at how your lack of banking regulations has created hardship across the world.
Your decisions, or indecisions, make my world less safe. Wasn’t that Japan’s reasoning in WWII? And against the British & Chinese at least, sound military reasoning?
Thus even your allies have a motive to reign you in, right now. And no great love or trust to offset that. No matter how big your army, you simply can’t take on the whole world. Please stop planning your nations actions as if you can.
While America’s pride in it’s self-reliance is undoubtedly one of your great strengths, brining cohesiveness to the many cultures in your large nation, it seems you still tow along the late XIXth century illusion of isolationism, the “too proud to fight” mentality, the idea that america could indeed stand alone.
If anything, the NYTimes charts show that you can’t, even if their full impact is debatable. You are deeply enmeshed in a world-spanning network of alliances, several of which you cannot survive without. And several of these alliances have been badly fragilised this century with your militaristic ventures, protectionist trade measures and selfish intransigence in the fight against climate change.
Obama seems to want (or have to) stay the course militarily, is in favour of even more protectionism, and doesn’t seem to have the muscle to move your production of pollutants.
So where’s the change your allies can believe in?
I think Pat what your examples prove is we react badly to threats. Anyone can be touched.
Geopolitics and the Great Game of Risk! in which the Cheneys and Stalins and Hitlers and everybody wants to be the winning player at, and Take Over The World.
Our thinking and diction and symbology are all locked into that notion of “the threat” of “the Enemy.” What a pleasingly seductive notion that is! How simple the world seems, if all that’s involved in living and getting a paycheck or a grant is perceiving a “threat” or “possible threat” or “maybe someday potential threat” or coming up with threats of your very own. Most of the living world works on the basis of symbiosis or indifference. For us it’s all what we think is a zero-sum game and usually is in truth negative-sum.
Any of you really smart people out there have a simple statement that the teachers and preachers of the world can broadcast to the rest of us, so all 6.7 billion of us have a prayer of “all just getting along?” Can’t be the Golden Rule, given all the sicknesses and weirdnesses and ranges of “human” behavior you can look up in the DSM IV and the newspaper and the history books. And now, of course, everywhere you look on the Web, which has made the Id an open Facebook.
Hey, the wild elephant isn’t going to touch that guy walking down Hollywood with the elephant gun and the safari jacket full of shells. See? Preparation is everything, for every possible “threat.”
Love the Vietnam-era, still-current T-shirts with the Death’s Head with the bloodshot eyes and the Sykes-Fairbarn dagger through the temples: “Kill ‘em all, and let God sort ‘em out!” Whoever’s God is the actual True God, of course.
I think Pat speaks for many in the industrialized, non-American world. It appears to me that we Americans have a stark choice over the long run. We can maintain our military might, while further impoverishing our “small-scale farmers” or we can join the rest of the world, particularly the industrialized world, in a cooperative effort to build and maintain a livable and progressive civilization. Together we can weather the small storms from the disaffected and angry fringe of nations and cultures who might seek our destruction, and we can work to bring them into that cooperative effort. If we choose, or have chosen for us, the former path, that of apparent military invulnerability, we will, sooner or later, and probably sooner, find that we have nothing left to defend but the obscene profits and loot garnered by the few who stand to gain from the continued and expanded militarization of our national culture. And we will have no one left to help us defend even that.
One simplistic proposal: A real national health care system will cost us $ 1 trillion or more over the next decade? Pay for it with a like reduction in our military budgets. Less than a 25% reduction in military spending would pay the additional health care bill. And the side benefits, to our own economy and the opportunities for expanded trade in medical technology alone would greatly outweigh the small return on our investment in arms shipments and sales to friends and potential enemies. Would we really be any less safe with a few fewer F-22s or nuclear submarines, or tanks, or Predators?
I’m of the Vietnam generation, and I think we missed a great opportunity in the wake of that disaster to reform a sick and greedy military, industrial, congressional complex. We cannot afford to fail again.
We are by far the most advanced country in the world. The only way we have come as far as we have is a direct result of our military. Without the military we posses we could all be hailing Hitler right now. Without the brave young men and women of the military we may be practicing the Koran. Without the young men and women of our great military we would not be able to take advantage of the freedoms we all take for granted.
While this is the case we must be sure not to abuse the military like Obama is planning with the development of a civilian security force. What is he thinking??? If he gets his way one day we may see the military marching up and down our streets telling us what we can and cannot do. Is that what all of you who voted for the almighty Obama wanted???
Not to throw the turd in the punch bowl but do remember: in some places where the Soviets pulled back from their empire, the dissolution into the tribal wars that preceded it was fast and horrific. It is like getting back together with the old band after twenty years: some lives, some cultures and some fights pick right back up at the point the strong force intervened.
Empire can mask tribalism. The corruption of government that makes it incapable of peaceful transitions can start in the family just as easily as the corporate boardroom.
The rich and greedy have the upper hand…for a while. Then they and theirs’ will collapse. Too bad!
Then it’s another turn of the wheel. The only problem is that fewer and fewer can kill and control more and more with the technological overreach. Our technology of dealing death, fear, and control has surpassed our ethical ability to deal with it all. The amplification of evil is pretty awesome these days…”awesome” not being used in the Valley Girl sense… Very few can control many…and they do.
Pat, first of all, you’re yammering at a guy who supports Iraq precisely as a War For Oil.
A few observations:
1. len, you are more than right. But it isn’t just tribal wars that our power masks. It masks full on tin pot dictators… Iraq was the 4th largest standing army. This is standard poli-sci 101, superpowers virtually assure regional outbreaks are reduced / end…. for every little terrorist group we deal with now (pipsqueaks) we aren’t dealing with North Korea invading South Korea.
2. I don’t know what world you live in Pat because you are anon, being clear about it will help me figure out if we keep you safe or not… forgive me not for taking you at your word.
3. This doesn’t mean we can’t cut military spending, in fact, if the liberals in my country would trade me “no more government” for “less military” I’d take that trade in a blind minute, because I’d trust capitalism to roll even faster across the world like a beautiful cancer… and capitalism trumps military as peace strategy, but you can’t fight a forward action (with capitalism) if your ass is getting chewed from behind (at home).
3a. As a example/proof of above. I LOVE what the Euro has done to Europe… it took only a couple years to get the whole train moving forward after decades of running in reverse… the Euro has gotten all the nation -states demanding of each other that they NO LONGER deficit spend. It truly is amazing. It was soooooo great to see Obama go over and plead that Europe do some quantitative easing – and be rebuffed.
See Pat, I’m not a militarist, I’m a capitalist. And as the world becomes more capitalist, I’ll feel more comfortable without a military to ensure that the shipping lanes stay open, and that no one can weaponize oil, but right now doing business globally is still more like a drug deal… you still want to have the biggest guys and guns in the room.
If you want less US military spending stop rooting for guys like Chavez. And start demanding free trade at ever peace protest you attend.
Morgan, the problem with capitalism is that it tends to equate the mere ownership of capital with creativity. I believe in creativity-ism. The problem is that the owners of capital tend to game the system and co-opt the creators. When you figure that one out, I’ll start reading/listening.
Rick,
Paint costs money. Always has and always will. Creativity requires commerce. A good artist deals with it.
And surely, you’ve never seen a society with more rich artists, than ours today.
Morgan, I might have a problem with your definition of “artists”.
I don’t happen to include Michael Jackson, Thomas Kinkade, or Leroy Nieman.
Just spent a day in a workshop with Bob Brozman, and he is an artist who should be rich, but is merely comfortable. Kicks ass though!
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
Major General Smedley Butler
“The problem is that the owners of capital tend to game the system and co-opt the creators.”
I thought the problem was scarcity of access: not enough places to sign up to be co-opted.
Development costs. Where have I seen that theme lately?
The one thing web tech is doing right, Rick, is changing the balance of power regards access to audience. Development costs are as high as one needs quality and there is no substitute except quantity as proven by the hat act factories and even there, cheap tennis shoes are still bad fits.
But because access to audience has changed, there is a win win. An act that can accept being ‘comfortable’ can chug up that hill of increasing audience accesses, hits, clicks and attention. Patience can overcome the effects of lack of access to capital as long as there is growth in skill. If the Bigs want a piece, there is the e-mail URI to start that conversation.
If not… “chug a lug. Makes you wanta holler hi de ho”.
Up to now, the entertainment business HAS been anonymity, patronage or slavery or ruddy pirate bastards with a hold full of gold gotten in the drug trade. And it looked as if it was all going to collapse back into that.
Then this:
http://mashable.com/2009/06/16/opera-unite/
Kaboom again.
Tribalism just beneath the surface? Waiting for a weakening or collapse of that central power? Every element of Steve0423’s post is one of the tribal myths that are so far from reality but so close to what’s “comforting” to believe. “We’re Number One!” Isn’t it comforting to know that there are over 300 million individual firearms in the hands of “patriots” all over the country, the majority of whom believe every bit of the exceptionalism and parochialism and reasons to hate and fear?
Here’s today’s take on the economic, and thus “democratic,” future of America the Beautiful, from another mind, on where “we” are: up shit creek without a paddle or a clue.
Mr. Taplin, if you haven’t looked at the sources referenced there, you might find some inspirations if you do.
Jeremy. War is a Racket is a great. Linky: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0922915865/disinformation
Now see if you can go just a small step further:
Capitalism can be achieved peacefully, but it will come by any means necessary. It failures are but rounding errors compared to any other system’s idiocy and defective assumptions.
My fear is that authoritarian-capitalism (China style) can edge out capitalist-democracy (old school American style), but we’re not going to be able to field our best team if we allow the “capitalist” part here to be fucked up by the “democracy” part here.
If the constant desire to vote yourself somebody else’s money is turned into working political theory, and the capitalist side of the equation continues to be injured, we will be crushed by China – and authoritarian regime.
No, democracy is an orchid that grows from the harsh jungle of capitalism (the creation and spread of wealth), again I’ll say it: the only way we’ll ever end our heavy military spending is when capitalists are confident they won’t have their property “voted” away from them.
True peacniks are capitalists of the second order, they want peace primarily but know it wont happen until people feel secure in their property.
Not ‘comfort to believe’ but discomforted to observe. History is pretty clear on those patterns.
However exceptionalism as blinders to the need to change is certainly a problem. The trick is to convince a population to go back to work in factories for reduced expectations while withdrawing from the foreign bases and expecting our trading partners to remain fixed in their own exceptionalism while we are simultaneously lowering our foreign involvements that contribute to their economy and preparing to compete with them with disconsolate labor.
Remember ‘cargo cults’?
“There isn’t one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians. People who are not in the Midwest do not understand that this is a socialist country.”
Dwayne Andreas CEO Archer Daniels Midland Co
That’s exactly why we have a military empire approach….
When government stays out of business, business will have no use for military. Until that time, Repubs will continue to “spend all the money” before Dems can…. that means bullshit just like ADM and the MIC.
Let me put it this way Jeremy, when the left forgets Saul Alinsky, we won’t have any more, “Mission Accomplished.”
Show of hands, how many believe and know deep in their hearts with all the information they have on what’s happening in the political and economic and military (actually all the same) sphere, that the US is a democracy?
Hey, even in the depths of Sovietism and Maoism and Marcosism and IdiAminism and even Huey Longism and RichardJDaleyism, “the people” got to vote. In fact they damn well BETTER vote.
Isn’t that the essence of “democracy,” in the real idiom of our rulers? The visual, without any real substance, and the backscore of the schlubs without any strength to effect any leveling or equalizing or simple homeostatic balancing? Starting a war in Iraq and Afgistupfakistan to “preserve our freedoms?” “Our sons (and daughters) sacrificing and dying to ‘preserve our liberty?’ ” Right….
Capitalism may be inevitable, since that’s the set of relationships and energy and wealth exchanges that makes the few better off than the many and encourages upward migration of wealth and downward migration of everybody who hasn’t either the political clout or money or maybe “blood of patriots” guts to resist. National Socialism and Soviet Communism were brands of capitalism, state-mediated of course, but with the same migration of power and wealth upward in the pyramid. Any of you want to argue that the US and Britain and Brazil and such are not state-mediated, planned economies with the elements of control just a little less obvious, in the guise of “tax policies” and how the regulatory processes and police power actually operate. And that at a recent Town Meeting on “health reform,” tea-baggers were actually shouting out of the depths of their total and complete sheeple ignorance that “the government has to keep its filthy hands off Medicare,” and no silly cavils that what they may have meant was that THEIR MEdicare benefits need to be protected. These dopes, these citizens of our democracy, whose “vote” is as good as every other schlub’s, have actually bought the notion that Medicare is a “private entity,” not the reality.
And we have the Smedley Butlers and Wendell “Harry” Potters telling us in our faces how the real world actually works, and we roll our eyes, click another icon, and continue to roll giant doobies out of the excrement of our “betters.”
Yeah, Morgan, capitalism is the answer to everything, and selling weapons, folks, will get “us” out of “our” deficits. Medicare is Not A Government-Run Health Care Program, It Belongs To The People! (Almost true, given the co-opting that the industry has done. Amolng the millions of surprises in store for the average schmuck with the triumph of Rope-a-Dope unsurance resistance, one of our patients discovered today that his Medicare has been “switche off” for an unfathomable reason, and since he has been pitched into the tar pit of a “private insurer” secondary, he can no longer use the services of his existing doctors. And the F-35 is right on course to being “just another program now.)
Ah, the idiot’s comfort of appealing slogans and True Belief. And the weird and insupportable but resistance-is-futile inevitability that the middle class will applaud its own execution in the name of “freedom” and “liberty” and “justice.” Nothing new here to look at folks, move along and return to your dwellings…
Stupid fucking species, especially Rubus Americanus.
JTM,
Pelosi / Obama’s approach to winning this effort I think proves dis-ingenuousness on their part.
Why not say, ok, we’re going to provide a basic services single-payer VA STYLE system, that won’t cover as much as much as private insurance, but it will:
- cover the 47M uninsured.
- be means tested. Forcing those in the 47M who can pay to pay.
- it will be paid for by taxing private plans worth more than $20K a year.
—–
They’d get this deal done. They’d even get insurance reforms to boot. But with this deal in place, they’d have:
- universal coverage.
- single payer for basic care.
- insurance reform.
- unions still happy.
The question is WHY they haven’t done this? And the only logical reason I can think of is it fails at taking over the system. I can’t think of another reason.
VA care for the bottom 47M makes total sense. And one of the key things about it is that the top 200M+ won’t want to join it, unless:
- private insurance keeeps getting more expensive.
- The government proves they can run a 47M single payer system (hiring the doctors, managing the electronic records, keeping it on budget)
It kinda weirds me out, the logical strategy play is to set up a system, MOST PEOPLE still don’t want to join, that has really thin coverage, proves it has little waste, gets rid of free riders.
If they kept saying these talking points:
“only minimum care to keep the uninsured out of expensive emergency rooms”
“your private insurance is still better”
“no-exclusions in private insurance”
“taxing Cadillac plans”
I think it would pass. Why not go for a decent half-a-loaf?
Why am I always reminded, when Mr. Warstler posts, of that famous old Solon of the Roman Senate, Cato the Elder (sometimes called Cato the Censor,) and his famous old tag line, ‘et preterea censeo Carthago delenda est.’ The line Cato, a Great Orator, was supposed to have used to finish off all his speeches to the Senate, whether on the price of grain, the difficulty of finding good concubines, or the delights of dishes made from peacock tongues. “And, after all that, I believe Carthage must be destroyed.” It worked for Wm. Randolph Hearst (Spanish-American War) and Cheney (Irakifukyusefistan,) maybe it will work for “shitty government medical care for poor people at the bottom.” Hey, the whole system works on bullets and talking points, and the delta in repetitions determines who wins, right?
Keep it up, Cheerful!
Yes, but JTM, having said that, still Carthage must be destroyed.
No, Hugo, if you read the history, it wasn’t a matter of Carthage “must-ing” to be destroyed. It was as with all imperial behavior, simply a matter that it “will” be destroyed. See Iraq, March 2003. Betcha the guys supplying the short swords and breastplates with the imperial eagle on ‘em and the troop transports and feed for the horses and mules and all that made a real killing back then, too.
But I guess we Americans get either points for not nuking all the rest of the commercial world to achieve dominion over the beasts and the birds and our fellows, or points for figuring out how to do what Morgan says we are doing: winning by infecting the rest of the world with the disease of greed and “capitalism,” and in the way of unintended consequences giving everybody else a common enemy which is the only organizing principle amongst humans with any real staying power.
“Mission Accomplished!”
Oh Jesus, JTM. That precisely defines our distinctions. You presume to instruct me on a point of fact upon which actually we agree. That, in my book, makes you a perfect ass.
Mission, as it were, accomplished.
Hugo, my apologies for missing the sense of your post. Subtlety in the the forms of satire and irony and sarcasm don’t easily penetrate the webfog of high dudgeon and ire.
Everyone is pleased to be acclaimed perfect at anything. Glad there’s agreement on what was up with the various people that constituted “Rome” and the other set of humans that constituted “Carthage.” That’s a start.
JTM, I appreciate your sense of the historicity of these things. Twenty years ago I heard someone read a paper containing an interesting comment: “In light of the burning children of Aushwitz, the world no longer can afford to glorify the profession of arms.” Your commentary reminds me often of that astute observation.