Anti-WalMart Campaign?

[ianlippert]

Damn it, I just wrote a huge response and then my internet crapped out and I lost it. So im gonna try and sum it up.

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Defence workers use there wages to purchases goods and services, its a good chance that those wages were derived directly or indirectly from tax dollars. So those tax dollers have not disapeared completely out of the economy. As I also said those dollars might have done better work somewhere else, I was just correcting the idea made a few pages back that tax dollars disapear eniterly out of the economy.

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If we are just talking about the labour then there isnt a net loss of money, but there is a loss in labour while those guys are over in Iraq.

When military hardware gets blown up there is a net loss to the economy. Is spending money on building houses and bulldozing them for no reason a net gain to the economy.

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However lots of money gets spent in the market on total [censored] junk such as MC Hammer cds etc.

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People buy Mc Hammer CDs because it makes them happier and we know there is value to the CDs because people willingly pay for them. We cannot determine the value that America is recieving from the war in Iraq because about half your population is being coerced into paying for something they have no desire to support.

[copies response just incase]

[ShakeZula06]

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How is military spending money taken out of the enonomy? Government spending all ends up in the economy. It just might not end up in the best place in the economy. This is entirely different to it being taken out of the economy all together.

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Sure you are transferring resources but you arent really getting anything in return. Those soldiers could be building infrastructure in you cities, those buildings and machines that are sitting in a desert halfway across the world could be schools and hospitals, not to mention that resources are lost when fuel and munitions are spent.

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[hmkpoker]

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Unionization=increased well-being by a high ammount for a lot of people.

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Do unions provide competitive production? Do union workers actually produce a better good at an affordable price, thereby fulfilling the purpose of their jobs? If so, why did the developer four blocks up decide to hire a private contractor to build his condo? The teamsters across the street with their inflatable rat seem distraught, but I'm sure it's just because he has a personal vendetta against increased well-being, and not because he wants a job to get done.

[iron81]

I'll play devil's advocate for a second and argue that we are getting quite a bit of utility out of our defense spending. Recall that 9-11 plunged our economy into recession, so if we can prevent another similar or worse attack that might justify defense expenditures. In addition, if our military power can ensure that we can acquire natural resources at a reduced cost, that might provide additional utility to the military.

Being serious, though, I can't help but recall the passage toward the end of 1984 where the antagonist explains why the super-states are constantly at war. The reason was that in order to control the population, the government needed to keep the population working feverishly but poor. If the population was working on something useful, they would likely improve their condition, which the govt. wanted to avoid. The solution was to blow their resources on the military: they would build huge war machines and simply destroy them after a while, thereby providing a sink to intentionally waste their society's resources.

[WillMagic]

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I'll play devil's advocate for a second and argue that we are getting quite a bit of utility out of our defense spending.

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Hahahahahahahahahaha...yes, blowing people the [censored] up utility. I don't know about you but I get huge psychic utility when hot lead gets introduced into people's brains.

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Recall that 9-11 plunged our economy into recession,

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Not really...the recession was already happening, and the main cause was inflation during the 1990's.

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so if we can prevent another similar or worse attack that might justify defense expenditures.

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Yeah, us attacking Iraq really reduced the likelihood of terrorist attacks in this country, and the $1 billion per day that is blown up there is really helping us out. LOL.

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In addition, if our military power can ensure that we can acquire natural resources at a reduced cost, that might provide additional utility to the military.

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Yeah, Iraq really has funded its own reconstruction.


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Being serious, though, I can't help but recall the passage toward the end of 1984 where the antagonist explains why the super-states are constantly at war. The reason was that in order to control the population, the government needed to keep the population working feverishly but poor. If the population was working on something useful, they would likely improve their condition, which the govt. wanted to avoid. The solution was to blow their resources on the military: they would build huge war machines and simply destroy them after a while, thereby providing a sink to intentionally waste their society's resources.

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Yeah, the government sucks, it has always sucked, and it will always suck, REGARDLESS OF WHO IS IN POWER, because for the institution to maintain itself it must make itself seem necessary, and government only seems necessary when people are poor and in danger.

[tolbiny]

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In addition, if our military power can ensure that we can acquire natural resources at a reduced cost, that might provide additional utility to the military.

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This is a physical impossibility. Please think about this, to secure those resources we need to take a couple of hundred thousand troops, tanks, bombs, ships, support personal and send them a ocuple thousand miles away. And they have done nothing to decrease the cost of production, the price of labor in the other country, or anything else that could reduce the "cost" at which we recieve the good.

[hmkpoker]

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Recall that 9-11 plunged our economy into recession,

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Not really...the recession was already happening, and the main cause was inflation during the 1990's.

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In all fairness, a LOT of highly productive commercial capital was lost on 9-11, and the psychic effects of the impression that a massive terrorist war is on the horizon does have some crazy effects on the market. I'm not saying that I agree with how we dealt with it, nor that the earlier inflation hasn't affected us, but still, a loss of capital makes us poorer by any reasonable measure.

[hmkpoker]

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This is a physical impossibility. Please think about this, to secure those resources we need to take a couple of hundred thousand troops, tanks, bombs, ships, support personal and send them a ocuple thousand miles away. And they have done nothing to decrease the cost of production, the price of labor in the other country, or anything else that could reduce the "cost" at which we recieve the good.

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Moreover, even if it were possible, why would Bush be telling us that we need to end our addiction to oil? Shouldn't he be galvanizing us into thieving the Middle East oil supply?

[pvn]

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I find it all together puzzling that you don't think that a small group of powerful people using their power to decrease the well-being of many less powerful people is NOT morally wrong.

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The employer is only decreasing the employee's well-being by refusing to deal with unions IF the employee is *entitled* to the job *under the conditions* demanded by the employee.

[BCPVP]

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How is military spending money taken out of the enonomy?

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Because people can't eat, drink, live in, play with, enjoy or get high off of bombs being blown up in the desert.

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They can with the wages they were paid with to make the bombs.

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Gotta keep them window glaziers in business!