Irn-Bru wrote:KazooSkinsFan wrote:OK, but what is your view you are "more" against them then me based on?
I didn't say that I was "more against the wars" than you. I said that we appear to be in disagreement over the extent to which they pose a moral and financial burden on the country (and therefore the extent to which war should weigh on one's decision whether to support a candidate or not). That doesn't mean I think you are OK with wars, or (necessarily) that I am "more" against them.
What I mean is this: Your claim is that war represents a "small" — or even "tiny" — fraction of what the government spends its money on. Presumably you have in mind the dollar figure attached strictly to operations in the Middle East, something like $1 trillion over the last ten years. So, you're thinking, $1 trillion spread over ten years, during which the average annual federal budget was roughly $1.5–$2 trillion, means only about 5% of the budget was spent on war. Thus we can call it "tiny" or make the claim that the "real" cost of the war is the bad will fomented in the areas where we are involved.
However, I can't restrict my own understanding of the cost of the war to the nominal dollar figure from the federal budget. In the first place, the entire so-called military industrial complex exists to be an aggressive war-making machine, and so justifies its always-increasing budgets with whatever operations we happen to be involved with. Notice that I didn't say I'm against "these wars" but simply "war" — I'm trying to make a larger point about political policy. So the vast majority (i.e., 99% or more) of the entire defense budget, which is by no means "small" or "tiny," is part of what I have in mind. This includes not only the military but the large number of "private" defense contractors and security firms that do not register as war expenditures, but rather as general defense services.
Since you're an economist, you'll appreciate my next point: we have to look at both seen and unseen costs to war. The opportunity cost of war is much greater than any other government program that I can think of. Without the military-industrial complex, we'd have millions of talented, eager workers ready to take on productive jobs that would increase the wealth of the average American. The resources dedicated to weapons, transports, machinery, security networks, etc., would instead be deployed in the service of consumers. Approximately one third of the federal budget, per year, would instead be directed to productive processes, consumer goods, and as cash in people's pockets.
I won't beat this point to death because I think with some reflection you will understand why I see this is particularly egregious for government war expenditures as opposed to, e.g., giving the homeless welfare checks. Why a shift away from war would be more dramatic, dollar for dollar, than privatizing some social service that government currently performs.
Furthermore, war-making has long been associated with indirect taxation: inflation. As Randolf Bourne famously wrote, "war is the health of the state." When governments had to finance wars via direct taxation, they were much more restricted in their ability to wage them. I won't go on about this here, but in my view (as backed by economics) inflation is both the largest transfer of wealth in American society and the reason we have business cycles that are so devastating to economic activity. Take away war and you take away one of the greatest false indicators of wealth; the economy and currency would be that much more stable, predictable, and sound.
OK, so much for the financial-burden side of things. Just a few points on morality to try to communicate why I think it's such a big deal.
- From a moral perspective, far worse than the arrogance we display or the hatred it causes (in my view) are the deaths of tens-to-hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in these countries. This alone, for me, escalates the war from being "something I disagree with" to something I could never support in such a direct manner as voting for a pro-war candidate. Even if the person running was Mr. Libertarian in all other respects, I couldn't justify giving him my support as though all that good would somehow outweigh this evil. I'd hold to this even if, in not voting, I knew that his opponent (who was just as bad on war and also bad on everything else) would be more likely to win.
- We are also running a number of secret prisons and engaging in torture, which poses its own problems, to say the least.
- At home, being in a state of war justifies the most outrageous government behavior, in terms of invasions of privacy, violations of rights, and an increase in the nanny / surveillance state. When the military so dominates a culture, it begins seeping into every aspect of our lives. I'd argue, for example, that the militarization of the police in this country has been an alarming feature of the past decade and one of the most pressing social issues of today. Likewise, the war on terror is used as an excuse to amp up the war on drugs considerably, with all of the predictable results and decay in culture.
Now, you might not disagree with very much of what I wrote above. The reason I write this out now is because it's apparent to me from the way we frame the issue that we have come to different conclusions on the significance of the above facts in relation to other political issues. That's all I was trying to get across. And I think when one understands my views above, it's easy to see why I analyze the upside / downside of Tea Party candidates the way I do. I was hoping I wouldn't have to write it all out like that, because it took a bit of effort
, but since you asked, I answered.
