You are hereEconomy

Economy


UVA Research Park Drains Our Economy

The University of Virginia research park, across Rt. 29 North from the National Ground Intelligence Center, is hosting a conference on weapons technologies that has been promoted as dealing with economically beneficial matters.

And why not?  Both the military facility and the research park provide jobs, and the people who hold those jobs spend their money on things that support other jobs.  What's not to like? 

Well, one problem is what those jobs do.  A Win/Gallup poll of 65 nations earlier this year found the United States by far most widely considered the greatest threat to peace in the world.  Imagine how it must sound to people in other countries when we talk about the U.S. military as a jobs program.

But let's stick to economics.  Where does the money come from for most of what goes on at the base and the research park north of town?  From our taxes and government borrowing.  Between 2000 and 2010, 161 military contractors in Charlottesville pulled in $919,914,918 through 2,737 contracts from the federal government. Over $8 million of that went to Mr. Jefferson's university, and three-quarters of that to the Darden Business School. And the trend is ever upward. 

It is common to think that, because many people have jobs in the war industry, spending on war and preparations for war benefits an economy. In reality, spending those same dollars on peaceful industries, on education, on infrastructure, or even on tax cuts for working people would produce more jobs and in most cases better paying jobs -- with enough savings to help everyone make the transition from war work to peace work.

The superiority of other spending or even tax cuts has been established repeatedly by seminal studies out of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, frequently cited and never refuted over the last several years.  Not only would spending on trains or solar panels or schools produce more and better paying jobs, but so would never taxing the dollars in the first place.  Military spending is worse than nothing, just in economic terms.

Add to this the impact on foreign policy that massive military spending has had since before President Eisenhower warned us on the day he left office: "The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual --" he said, "is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government."  Today even more so, so much so perhaps that we notice it less, so routine has it become.

Connecticut has set up a commission to work on transitioning to peaceful industries, largely for economic reasons.  Virginia or Charlottesville could do the same. 

The U.S. government spends over $600 billion a year just on the Department of Defense, and over $1 trillion total every year on militarism across all departments and debts for past wars.  It's over half of U.S. discretionary spending and about as much as the rest of the world's nations combined, including the many NATO members and allies of the United States.

It would cost about $30 billion per year to end starvation and hunger around the world.  That sounds like a lot of money to you or me.  It would cost about $11 billion per year to provide the world with clean water.  Again, that sounds like a lot.  But consider the amounts being spent on economically detrimental programs that also damage our civil liberties, our environment, our safety, and our morality.  It wouldn't cost much for the U.S. to become seen as the greatest threat to suffering and poverty instead of to peace.

David Swanson is a Charlottesville resident and organizer of WorldBeyondWar.org.

Emails: ND Ethics Law Potentially Broken on Petraeus Fracking Trip

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

DeSmogBlog has obtained emails via North Dakota's Open Records Statute revealing facts that could be interpreted as indicating that North Dakota Treasurer Kelly Schmidt broke State Investment Board ethics laws.

Photo Credit: Office of North Dakota State Treasurer; Obtained via ND Open Records Statute

Talk Nation Radio: Daniel Hyslop on How Militarism and Violence Cost Us Prosperity

https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-daniel-hyslop-on-how-militarism-and-violence-cost-us-prosperity

Daniel Hyslop is research manager at the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) where he coordinates research and manages IEP’s research team (see http://economicsandpeace.org ).  IEP produces the Global Peace Index (see http://visionofhumanity.org ). He discusses the economic costs of war and violence.

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download from Archive or LetsTryDemocracy.

Pacifica stations can also download from AudioPort.

Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!

Please embed the SoundCloud audio on your own website!

Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at
http://davidswanson.org/talknationradio

Talking with National Climate Assessment Vice Chair Gary Yohe: Telling It Like It Is, Not Like It Will Be, On Climate Change

By Dave Lindorff

 

Dr. Gary Yohe, Huffington Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University, and vice chair of the just-released third National Climate Estimate, talks about this latest report, which instead of looking out at a grim future of flooded coastlines, epic droughts and floods and soaring temperatures, looked at the evidence already confronting Americans in every state of the union.

Commander Behind Bin Laden Killing: FBI/DHS Wasting Time Tracking Environmentalists

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Dave Cooper, Command Master Chief SEAL (Retired) for the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), has authored a threat assessment concluding TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is potentially at-risk of a terrorism attack. 

ND Treasurer: Red Carpet Rollout for Gen. Petraeus Fracking Field Trip "Not Unusual"

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

North Dakota Treasurer Kelly Schmidt has responded to DeSmogBlog's investigation of the Bakken Shale basin fracking field trip her office facilitated for former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, who now works at the Manhattan-based private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR)

David Petraeus Kelly Schmidt

Krauthammer is right: The US Empire is in Decline

By Dave Lindorff


I was shocked to find myself in almost perfect agreement today with a recent column by the neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer. 


Usually Krauthammer has me groaning, but yesterday his column nailed it.


Revealed: Former Energy in Depth Spokesman John Krohn Now at EIA Promoting Fracking

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

For those familiar with U.S. Energy Information Administration's (EIA) work, objectivity and commitment to fact based on statistics come to mind. Yet as Mark Twain once put it, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

That's where John Krohn comes into play. A former spokesman for the gas industry front group Energy in Depth (EID), Krohn now works on the Core Team for EIA's "Today in Energy!

Southwestern Energy Executive Mark Boling Admits Fracking Link to Climate Change

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

An Executive of a major shale gas development company has conceded what scientists have been saying for years: global shale gas development has the potential to wreak serious climate change havoc.

Best known for his company's hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") activity, Southwestern Energy Executive Vice President Mark Boling admitted his industry has a methane problem on the May 19 episode of Showtime's "Years of Living Dangerously" in a segment titled, "Chasing Methane."

The latest on ThisCantBeHappening! radio: Interview with Jailed Occupy Activist Cecily McMillan's Attorney Martin Stolar

By Dave Lindorff


In this edition of Progressive Radio Network's "ThisCantBeHappening" radio program, host Dave Lindorff, focuses on the case of Occupy Movement activist Cecily McMillan, currently jailed at Riker’s Island without bail while awaiting sentencing on a conviction of felony assault of a police officer.

Kangaroo court convicts Occupy protester: DA Cyrus Vance Jr., Prosecutor for the Rich

By Dave Lindorff


Two and a half years after the Occupy Wall Street movement took the country by storm, injecting topics like income inequality and class war into the realm of permissible national political discourse for the first time since the 1930s, the nation’s legal machinery of repression has come down like a proverbial ton of bricks on the movement just as nationally coordinated police repression crushed its physical manifestation in late 2011.


For First Time, TransCanada Says Tar Sands Flowing to Gulf in Keystone XL South

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

TransCanada admitted for the first time that tar sands oil is now flowing through Keystone XL's southern leg, now rebranded the Gulf Coast Pipeline Project. The company confirmed the pipeline activity in its 2014 quarter one earnings call.

Gulf Stream: Williams Nixes Bluegrass Gas Export Pipeline, Announces New Export Line

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog 

Right before the champagne bottles began popping for activists engaged in a grassroots struggle to halt the construction of Williams Companies' prospective Bluegrass Pipeline project — which the company suspended indefinitely in an April 28 press release — Williams had already begun raining on the parade.

TransCanada Charitable Fund: Keystone XL South “Good Neighbor” Charm Offensive

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

TransCanada has taken a page out of former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's playbook and deployed a public relations "charm offensive" in Texas, home of the southern leg of its Keystone XL tar sands pipeline now known as the Gulf Coast Pipeline Project.

Mayflower: 1st ExxonMobil Tar Sands Pipeline Spill, Now Deadly Tornado Destroys Arkansas Town

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

On March 29, 2013, ExxonMobil's Pegasus tar sands pipeline ruptured in Mayflower, Arkansas, sending hundreds of thousands of gallons of diluted bitumen ("dilbit") pouring down the town's streets.

If War Was Funded Like College Tuition

Are you as tired as I am of news stories about college tuition costs rising? I've been out of college for many years, and you'd have to pay me to go back, but this is ridiculous. 

To see how ridiculous, try a little thought experiment. Imagine opening your newspaper and reading this:

"War and War Preparations Costs to U.S. Households Rose Again This Year

"Continuing a decades-long trend, the cost each U.S. resident pays for his or her wars and war preparations rose 5.3 percent this year. 

"With all costs of the U.S. military, across numerous government departments, reaching $1.2 trillion annually, according to Chris Hellman of the National Priorities Project, and with a U.S. population of 314 million people, bills to those opting for war-making as their foreign policy choice this year came to $3,822 each -- not counting room, board, and books."

Of course, that bill is for anyone who supports the U.S. government's spending priorities and anyone who doesn't, and it's a bill for every person, from disabled senior citizen to new-born infant. 

It's a bill that might strike some as a bit high.  So, here's one way this imaginary news story might develop:

"In an expanding trend, thousands of Americans opted for a smaller military investment this year.  Choosing to pay their share of a military the size of China's -- $188 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute -- some war consumers bought the $599 war plan this year. 

"Others opted for the Russian model at a cost of $280.  But with polls showing that Americans believe Iran to be the greatest threat to peace, the Iranian-sized military has become this year's most rapid climber in the rankings; of course, the $20 price tag doesn't hurt.

"Buddy Beaverton of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, remarked at the post office as he mailed a check: 'If we could have Canada's annual supply of wars for $59 each, why should I have to pay $3,822? It's bad enough they've got cheaper prescription drugs that we're not allowed to buy!'"

Mr. Beaverton would have a point.  Some other nations that don't invest in wars and war preparations the way the United States does also make college education free or affordable -- and still have plenty of money to spare for frivolous luxuries like healthcare or energy systems that don't render the planet unlivable.

What would our lives be like if college were as free and unquestionable as military spending is now, but military spending arrived as an optional bill? 

Those who didn't want it could choose not to pay.  Those who wanted a coast guard, a national guard, and some anti-aircraft weapons could chip in a few bucks.  Those who wanted a bit more than that could pay a bit more.

And those who wanted troops in 175 nations, aircraft carriers in every sea, enough nuclear weapons to destroy life on several planets, and fleets of drones with which to traumatize and antagonize several nations at once -- well, they could pay their $3,822, plus of course another $3,822 for anybody opting out.

What a naive proposal! Left to individual choice, the commons would be destroyed, and our national defense would crumble!

Really?  People in the United States give over $300 billion to charity each year.  Nobody forces them to.  If they believed weapons and wars were the most important cause to donate their dollars to, they'd do it.  No nation on earth spends $300 billion or anywhere close to it on its military, other than the United States.

And with the government no longer funding the military in its socialistic manner, it might choose instead to fund many of the humanitarian causes to which private charity is now largely devoted. Private giving could take care of the Pentagon. 

But if wisdom about the counter-productive results of militarism spread, if nonviolent alternatives were learned, if free college had a positive impact on our collective intellect, and if the fact that we could end global poverty or halt global warming for a fraction of current military spending leaked out, who knows? Maybe militarism would fail in the free market.

Vice President Joe Biden Promotes U.S. as Fracking Missionary Force On Ukraine Trip

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

During his two-day visit this week to Kiev, Ukraine, Vice President Joe Biden unfurled President Barack Obama's "U.S. Crisis Support Package for Ukraine."

Earth Day Greenwash: API Front Group Iowa Energy Forum Sponsors Pro-Keystone XL Event

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

The political carnival that is the prelude to the Iowa caucuses has started over a year and a half early. At the center of it this time around: a game of political hot potato over the northern leg of TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

War Cost World $9.46 Trillion in 2012

By Talia Hagerty, Pacific Standard

Economists are not new to the study of war. Many in the U.S. have argued that war is good for the economy, and those in Washington have seemed eager to believe them. Indeed, war is an ideal economics topic. It’s very expensive, and the numbers involved—money spent, weapons used, casualties—can be easily counted and crunched.

There is, however, a more challenging topic that has recently caught the eye of economists: peace.

In the last decade, researchers and economists from all over the world have made great gains in the nascent field of peace economics. They’re finding that violence and war are terrible for the economy, but also that we can use economics to prevent them.

Interview: "Big Men" Director Rachel Boynton on Oil, Ghana and Capitalism

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

The subtitle of the newly released documentary film Big Men is "everyone wants to be big" and to say the film covers a "big" topic is to put it mildly.

Executive produced by Brad Pitt and directed by Rachel Boynton, the film cuts to the heart of how the oil and gas industry works and pushes film-watchers to think about why that's the case. Ghana's burgeoning offshore fields — in particular, the Jubilee Field discovered in 2007 by Kosmos Energy — serve as the film's case study.

ThisCantBeHappening! interviews Prof. Harold Wanless on PRN.fm: Climate Change is Much Worse than Even the IPCC Predictions

By Dave Lindorff


Dave Lindorff, host of the Progressive Radio Network program "ThisCantBeHappening!", interviews Professor Harold Wanless, chair of the Geology Department at the University of Miami and a leading climate change expert. Wanless talks about the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, explaining that as scary as that organization's latest predictions are concerning accelerating global warming, it is far too conservative.

ANR Pipeline: Introducing TransCanada's Keystone XL for Fracking

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

When most environmentalists and folks who follow pipeline markets think of TransCanada, they think of the proposed northern half of its Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. 

Flying beneath the public radar, though, is another TransCanada-proposed pipeline with a similar function as Keystone XL. But rather than for carrying tar sands bitumen to the Gulf Coast, this pipeline would bring to market shale gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing ("fracking").

Meet TransCanada's ANR Pipeline System.

A program to take over human communications?: The Drones of Facebook (and the NSA)

By Alfredo Lopez

 

"Connectivity," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a CNN interview last year, "is a human right."

A program to take over human communications?: The Drones of Facebook (and the NSA)

By Alfredo Lopez

 

"Connectivity," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a CNN interview last year, "is a human right."

"Our Energy Moment": The Blue Engine Behind Fracked Gas Exports PR Blitz

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Behind nearly every major corporate policy push there's an accompanying well-coordinated public relations and propaganda campaign. As it turns out, the oil and gas industry's push to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) obtained via hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") plays the same game.

"Our Energy Moment": The Blue Engine Behind Fracked Gas Exports PR Blitz

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Behind nearly every major corporate policy push there's an accompanying well-coordinated public relations and propaganda campaign. As it turns out, the oil and gas industry's push to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) obtained via hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") plays the same game.

Speaking Events

2017

 

August 2-6: Peace and Democracy Conference at Democracy Convention in Minneapolis, Minn.

 

September 22-24: No War 2017 at American University in Washington, D.C.

 

October 28: Peace and Justice Studies Association Conference



Find more events here.

CHOOSE LANGUAGE

Support This Site

Donate.

Get free books and gear when you become a supporter.

 

Sponsors:

Speaking Truth to Empire

***

Families United

***

Ray McGovern

***

Julie Varughese

***

Financial supporters of this site can choose to be listed here.

 

Ads:

Ca-Dress Long Prom Dresses Canada
Ca Dress Long Prom Dresses on Ca-Dress.com

Buy Books

Get Gear

The log-in box below is only for bloggers. Nobody else will be able to log in because we have not figured out how to stop voluminous spam ruining the site. If you would like us to have the resources to figure that out please donate. If you would like to receive occasional emails please sign up. If you would like to be a blogger here please send your resume.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.