Our Economy is INSANE!!!
An expert in Aaron Russo's movie "Freedom to Fascism" said that American's income tax dollars do not go to war costs, they actually only go to paying interest on the federal deficit - which really means the profits of the private corporation known as the Federal Reserve.
Actually, the same expert said that annual American defense spending is proportional to the amount of taxes corporations pay. But, the same movie said that in 2005 corporation only paid around $3 billion in taxes while income taxes paid were around $10 billion. I don't know where that extra money is coming from.
Most well-informed, candid people seem to say that our system of industrial management, the Military-Industrial complex, is Keynesianism. The U.S. government uses war costs to subsidize industrial economic "pump-priming" as well as high-tech spending and research and development.
Given all these facts, I have a hard time believing that corporations are willing to pay taxes just to subsidize defense contractor profits, because there is obviously no "trickling down" if what you have purchased is a missile or a plane, because no one is going to buy or use that kind of product domestically (we will probably just give it away to the Israelis anyway).
Most of the extra money must come from borrowing money from or selling arms to other nations. So we make up the difference by either expanding our trade deficits or making the world less safe. Our economy is just insane.
Now that reports are saying that we are going to spend more on Iraq than we did in Vietnam, we have to wonder what economic benefit we are really going to receive from Iraq. Most would probably say oil, but I think most of us who are not invested in oil hope we develop alternative energy sources and become energy independent.
America went into a recession after the Vietnam era. Now, textbooks say that the economy was lifted out of the recession by Reagan’s economic policies, which were pure military Keynesianism just like Bush’s, were simply to increase military spending. In the face of détente with the Soviet Union, he did so by creating a new enemy – terrorism. So we bombed Libya and boosted the economy. Hooray for capitalism.
However, these policies were bad for the market, and in 1982, a poll by the Wall Street Journal showed that "83 percent of Wall Street executives were opposed to increases or sharp increases in the military budget" ("The Disarmament Debate: New Directions," National Forum 63:4, Fall 1983, pp. 38-39).
The Reagan administration failed in its efforts to boost the competitive market economy from a global standpoint because he could not get other nations to waste money through military spending to a comparable degree. This is why the Japanese did so well in the 1980's, because though they had a similar system of state socialist planning (the state sector of the US economy can be considered socialist by the way), the Japanese systems focused on increasing competition among participants; competition among many participants rather than handing multi-billion dollar contracts over to a giant corporate conglomerate like Lockheed-Martin. The state sector of the US economy rewards conquest in business, and fascist ways of thinking in business, even successful business, lead to rewarding monopolies.
So, now Bush is going to try it again. The only problem is now there are several other nations that are emerging economic superpowers, and we simply are not going to be able to compete with them.
All of this could be seen as evidence that our government serves the interests of the corporate elite over the legitimate national interests. Hell, most of the top tier of our government comes from the corporate elite – investment bankers (moneychangers), corporate lawyers, oil men, and generals/defense contractors. And the American people just sit back and let it happen. Volenti non fit injuria.
I only hope our next Presidential administration is better at economics then the previous one.