The largest employer in the United States is the Dept. of Defense, followed by Walmart, and then two other fast food places.
Personally, I'd rather have a solid union job with benefits and a retirement plan assembling death machines, then wear a cheap polyester uniform and need food stamps to get by.
Is it possible that the American Economy is propped up by the Industrial Military Complex in some hellish perversion of keynesian economics?
Could things be that bad?
you are just now figuring this out
It's a self sustaining system. The only thing it needs is war and conflict.
Who really benefited from the war you ask? Let's take a look.
Who benefits?
Lockheed Martin Corporation, The Boeing Company, Raytheon Company, General Dynamics Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Leidos Holdings, Inc., Huntington Ingalls Industries, L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., United Technologies Corporation, BAE Systems PLC, SAIC, McKesson Corporation, Bechtel Group Inc., Veritas Capital Fund, Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation.
Who are the major shareholders of those companies?
Vanguard Group, State Street Corp, Capital Research Global Investors, Templeton Investment Counsel LLC, Barclays Bank Plc, BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Ltd., Schroder Investment Management, Capital World Investors, Bank of America Corporation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Black Rock Advisors, Black Rock Fund Advisors, Old Republic International, Wellington Management Company, BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N. A., Evercore Trust Company, N. A., FMR, LLC, , Invesco Ltd., Franklin Resources, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., T. Rowe Price Group, Inc., Quantum Group of Funds
Who is the major shareholders / owners / founders of those banks / investment companies?
Rothschild, Rockefeller, Soros, Morgan, Warburg, Fink, Schlosstein…
Or maybe just the threat of war and conflict. All that massive spending on the arms race, and I've been told the "bomber gap" and "missile gap" were both falsehoods. The Soviets had the lead at no point in the Arm's race.
Yes, clearly the Military Industrial Complex exists, and is making Billions for some people.
But I'm wondering if in some maladjusted way, the American economy is dependent on it.
This would explain why the "peace dividend", we were promised with the collapse of the Soviet Union never happened.
How could I research this kind of thing?
Kind of disappointed by the lack of response to this thread.
You people do know keynesian economics, right? It's when the government takes on debt to create jobs in order to stimulate the economy. FDR did with the W.P.A. during the depression. I call the Industrial Military Complex a perversion of that idea, because instead of building things like the Hoover Dam or the Golden Gate Bridge we're building war material. But I think it might still be serving a the same purpose by creating jobs and an economic multiplier effect that supports other businesses and such.
Since the other large employers are "mcjobs" could this be essential to American economic health?
Could the Military Industrial Complex be somekind of bizarro world type of socialism?
that's only necessary in a recession tho thanks to capitalists pulling all of their money out of investments. The money currently going to the 🍀🍀🍀MIC🍀🍀🍀 could easily be spent elsewhere and be just as productive, but its not thanks to entrenched interests.
The real benefits is that the state takes on the risk involved in high cost, high risk r&d that otherwise would not be done in the private sphere for several decades.
I wouldn't be surprised - a major problem in confronting the military-industrial complex is that many electoral districts rely on the pork barrel spending provided by it.
Well the elites are doing fine,, stock market, yadda yadda,, but it's a jobless recovery,, that's the problem.
Yes, their geniuses at that. I remember reading about one weapons system that was had parts of it being made all over the nation so they could hit as many districts of key congressional players as possible. (I'll post a link to this if I can find one)
I mean, yeah, haven't you heard those stories of military brass pleading with Congress to stop making them purchase tanks, weapons, and supplies they don't need? AFAIK there's massive stockpiles of military surplus crap that they ended up paying for, because it provides good "middle class" jobs for some senator's home state.
A while ago some redditor estimated that if you add up all the veterans, civilian contractors, public employees, and medicare/medicaid recipients, around half the population of the USA gets their healthcare either provided or subsidized by the government. America has a vast welfare state, but it has to be hidden from public view due to capitalist ideology, so it's given to the military industrial complex instead. They're the last bastion of decent benefits, high-paying jobs, if you don't count the FIRE industries and high technology. It is this labor aristocracy, largely subsidized by the government, whose consumption drives America's post-industrial service economy, right down to the retail McJobs which sustain the working poor.
Thank you for contributing. I've seen the news story about the tanks the army didn't want,, funny thing the army suggested foreign markets,, and now we're selling to tanks to Saudi Arabia.
lots of stuff hinted at in this article.. it seems to be the only time in decade that Congress is willing to defend someone's job.
military.com
Please post anything connected to this, I know there are some good smart folks round here. A while back I asked about Reagan and got a ton of stuff about how terrible he was.
I knew Reagan sucked.. but I could never document it so well before that.
Fun fact: an interest rate hike of 1% would cause interest payments on federal debt to be larger than all federal spending combined.
Better buy your guns now
…that's not how that works retard. The interest rate isn't for previously issued debt but newly issued debt. goverment bonds have their interest rates fixed.
No flexible interest rates or balloon payments for the state, eh?
Yeah, it is.
lolno
It's about a progressive taxation system and redistribution of wealth through social programs.
Irrelevant, the government can only pay bills with loans. Can you spot the problem when a government can only pay debt by borrowing more debt?
The American economy is entirely dependent on it yes. The billions the government spends on R&D keeps people employed. Some of what the make is sold on at profit but this profit isn't going back into the government or state but defense contractors pockets. This does help bump up the GDP a bit, stopping the debt going over 100% for now, but the return is nothing like the government spending on defense as a whole which is in the trillions.
We might both be right.. FDR did both social programs and work programs.
Yes, but say they borrow a trillion dollars over the next year. They would be paying 1% interest on that only, which is just 10 billion dollars. There may very well be a crisis coming. But it won't be from the fed raising the interest rate 1%.
Yes.. I do see the problem.. The United States is creating a huge debt and a huge amount of our budget is military spending. It is an unsustainable system. warisacrime.org
The US could until recently afford to run up debt as other countries have large dollar holdings and of course Petrodollar.
wikispooks.com
And if anybody threatens this, there's always that over-equipped military to force compliance.
Didn't they have usable ICBM's before the USA?
Interesting.. Have you heard that the reason Libya had to be overthrown was that they were going to start a gold based currency that would compete with the Euro?
It was supposed to be in those e-mails that no one in the media talks about.
/liberty/ said the same thing.
The government subsidy of war material has other repercussions as well.
What happens when the production outstrips the demand from the U.S military?
1. Overseas sales.. The last big conflict, the United States had was against Iraq. Most of his military equipment was made in the USA.
2. militarization of police in usa. we've got all these armored cars and automatic weapons lets give them to officer friendly and see what happens.
More on police industrial complex.
Wow a police officer that isn't a bootlicker for once.