10.28.11
Keynsian jobs programs — defense spending — threatened
I’ve long referred to much arms contracting in the US as Keynsian jobs programs. All labor in them is protected, everyone else can go to hell.
The Republican Party, and a surprising number of Democrats, don’t care if jobs for making all sundries in US stores are all from China, domestic non-military production gutted.
On the other hand, all jobs in defense manufacturing are sacrosanct. Cut defense spending and immediately the cry is heard, “But that will cost jobs!”
Yes, yes it will.
Ah, so now we have a new principle of economics: government spending can’t create jobs, but cuts in government spending can destroy jobs — as long as the jobs are in the defense sector …
One thought here is that a Keynesian is an Austrian whose campaign contributors are about to lose a lucrative contract. But it also harks back to Keynes’s point, when he suggested burying bottles full of cash in disused coalmines, so that private enterprise could dig them back up and create jobs in the process …