Republicans — who normally insist that the government can’t create jobs, and who have argued that lower, not higher, federal spending is the key to recovery — have rushed to oppose any cuts in military spending. Why? Because, they say, such cuts would destroy jobs.
Thus Representative Buck McKeon, Republican of California, once attacked the Obama stimulus plan because “more spending is not what California or this country needs.” But two weeks ago, writing in The Wall Street Journal, Mr. McKeon — now the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee — warned that the defense cuts that are scheduled to take place if the supercommittee fails to agree would eliminate jobs and raise the unemployment rate.
Oh, the hypocrisy! But what makes this particular form of hypocrisy so enduring? ...Paul Krugman
You know as well as I do! Building weapons is more productive than building infrastructure? Of course not. Because politicians are nuts, that's why, and if you don't believe me, take a look at Keynes' understanding of the their hypocrisy.
But why would anyone prefer spending on destruction to spending on construction, prefer building weapons to building bridges?
John Maynard Keynes himself offered a partial answer 75 years ago, when he noted a curious “preference for wholly ‘wasteful’ forms of loan expenditure rather than for partly wasteful forms, which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict ‘business’ principles.”
Spend money on some useful goal, like the promotion of new energy sources, and people start screaming, “Solyndra! Waste!” Spend money on a weapons system we don’t need, and those voices are silent, because nobody expects F-22s to be a good business proposition.
And now they're pushed even farther into hypocrisy with the possibility that the debt reduction super-committee may fizzle and force us into huge defense cuts.
..To admit that public spending on useful projects can create jobs is to admit that such spending can in fact do good, that sometimes government is the solution, not the problem. Fear that voters might reach the same conclusion is, I’d argue, the main reason the right has always seen Keynesian economics as a leftist doctrine, when it’s actually nothing of the sort.
True. If you actually read Keynes, you'll know he was no lefty. Need a shortcut? Insta-Keynes? Try this.
We don't need is further proof that Republicans will do anything, spread any rumor, indulge in any sustained form of ignorance, fool with any ballot box, or spread any slur to increase power. See, they'd like us to believe that their government (if they should take control of it) is not useless. After all, George W. Bush expanded government massively. Their government spending is good spending. Like the F-22s, like the preemptive, unjustified and unwinnable wars and further, unneeded, tax cuts for the wealthiest and even for corporations who send jobs overseas. Their spending, after all, results in a huge tip going right into their own pockets via the pockets of the top 1%.
And bank failures and deep recessions...
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