We
just watched Bill Moyer's spinoff program, "Now". Interviewed was a
great guy who wrote, "Why We Fight," an in-depth look at the tentacles
of the military-industrial-congressional complex (we called it the iron
triangle). It's so deeply intrenched in every Congressional district,
by conscious design in the case of the B-1 bomber and probably other
weapons systems - that it is not opposed. It provides jobs.
Left out - nearly always - is the fact that spending a million or a
billion dollars by government in any segment of the economy would create
a lot more jobs. I talked during the 80s and early 90s about this, and
started an economic conversion project with Utica College professors,
pollster John Zogby, and a cross-section of the county, to examine how
military bases and companies could convert to a peacetime economy and
create more jobs. The project went on for four years. Finally Griffiss
Air Force Base was closed after the Cold War ended, but people didn't
want to face reality in advance of that fact and do the planning
necessary so that innocent workers wouldn't be left out in the cold.
During WW II, 90% of U.S. resources went toward the war
effort, I learned. In 1943-44, planners started discussing economic
conversion - in what direction our "enormously productive economy"
should go when these resources were no longer needed for the war. Here
is one retailing analyst's prescription: "We must make consumption our
way of life, seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in
consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded
at an ever-increasing rate." Compare that with the Iroquois principle,
"In our every decision we must consider its impact on the next seven
generations." Our consumer society is no accident. The result is that
4% of the world now consumes and discards 25% - 40% of the world's
resources. We consume 43% of world oil produced (as of February, 2006).
Increasingly, society funnels this wealth into the hands of the
relatively few. After WW II, our "enormously productive economy" could
have instituted a "Marshall Plan" for the world over the decades,
eliminating poverty, injustice, and lack of opportunity that result in
violence and war. We apparently have enough money to spend nearly a
billion dollars a day in Iraq and Afghanistan; we could have spent a
fraction of that to create sufficiency for all globally - basic
nutrition, clean water, housing, education, preventive and primary
health care - $60-$70 billion annually as estimated by the U.N. Our
society could have continued long-standing American values of thrift,
simplicity, and sharing; promoted the arts, creativity, lifelong
education, a shorter work week, and sufficiency for all people - decent
affordable housing (an American goal in 1949), basic health care for
all, subsidized education for all who earn good grades and fully funded
Head Start for those who need it, a clean environment, alternative
energy researched and implemented decades ago, quality child care
because we know that in the first years of life, brain growth is
greatest and basic emotional health is determined; in short, we could
have promoted human potential and a greater quality of life, instead of
promoting the acquisition of things we don't need and can't afford and
valuing appearance over substance.