The gist of his argument is that US military spending is causing huge deficits, which in turn greatly harm US financial health. I will begin by noting the few things which we agree on.
There are many reasons for this budgetary sleight-of-hand ... but the chief one is that members of Congress, who profit enormously from defence jobs and pork-barrel projects in their districts, have a political interest in supporting the Department of Defense.
There is no way around the fact that a significant percentage of military spending is pork, and in many cases pork that utterly dwarfs more famous things like the 'bridge to nowhere'. Congressmen push for the purchase of billion-dollar hardware that the military doesn't want, Senators demand that superfluous domestic bases remain open, and it's been going on for decades. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent in a way that would irk hawks just as much as doves, though for some reason military pork isn't as widely reported as domestic pork.
The second area of agreement is that government spending financed by deficits for the purpose of 'job creation', which is the functional definition of Keynesian economics, is not good policy. A congressman who lobbies for a military project in his or her district because it would 'create jobs' either does so by diverting funds from the general public through taxes, or by deficit spending. Some level of deficit spending is tolerable, but after a certain point it isn't. Chalmers things that the US debt is too high, and I agree.
If only those areas of agreement covered even a fraction of his column, which is from what I can tell little more than an extended book plug.
There are three broad aspects to the US debt crisis. First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money on “defence” projects that bear no relation to the national security of the US. We are also keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segment of the population at strikingly low levels.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, when did tax policy come into play? What does that have to do with the military? Ah, it has to do with the debt. Chalmers wants to raise taxes and gain more revenue to start paying off the debt. Taxes are relevant in a debate about deficits, and you know what else is? The rest of the federal budget, most of which is non-military. Chalmers bases his 'three broad aspects' on three broad (false) assumptions, the first being that only military spending and too-low tax rates are the cause of deficit spending.
Chalmers expands on this later, and comes up with $1.1 trillion in annual military spending. Included in this number are such items as "$1.9bn to the Department of Justice for the paramilitary activities of the FBI" and "$200bn in interest for past debt-financed defence outlays". The military's portion of debt financing is certainly into the billions, but unless debt financing is well over $500 billion it makes no sense to say that the military is responsible for that much. It makes even less sense to lump that, homeland defence (which is mostly about 'first responders') and veterans affairs into "military spending", and then compare that with armies-and-armaments spending of other nations. Chalmers doesn't even NEED to high-ball the military spending number, since the amount that can't be contested is in the 600-800 billion range, but he does anyway just to get the maximum outrage impact. $1 trillion is the magic number.
UPDATE: In regards to the $200 billion in interest counted as military spending, the 2009 budget has $260 billion in interest. This means for 2007, Chalmers is counting all or the vast majority of debt interest payment as being from military spending, even though military spending hasn't been a majority of the federal budget in generations.
Moving on, Chalmers provides the following as 'no relation to the national security' items:
-Pork-barrel military projects wanted by congressmen
-Excess nuclear weaponry
-????
One might assume that he views the war in Iraq as being in this category, but he doesn't even come out in opposition to it. An article thousands of words long, discussing current US military spending, contains the word Iraq 4 times, and all of them are neutral! Johnson doesn't attempt to say that the mission is wasteful, or the way it's done is wasteful... he doesn't SAY anything about a war that adds hundreds of billions to the current spending level! He references pork projects without saying how much they total, and notes that much military spending is obscured from public view, but surely there must be some way to explicitly bring up what he sees as bad spending, what a reasonable level would be, etc. This would be a perfect place to try and hype a military version of the 'bridge to nowhere', something that doves and fiscal libertarians can unite against... nope. Just a vague "look at how much is being spent, it must be mostly waste!". Granted, there's the "for more details, buy my book" aspect of things, but if he has time to give line-items like *the FBI*, and lots of debt-related minutiae, why so little that directly impacts the core of his argument?
Oh and he doesn't actually address the "we aren't taxing the rich enough" part either, meaning that he makes no serious attempt to prove the first of his three 'broad aspects'. Let's move on to the second.
Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures — “military Keynesianism”. By that, I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.
I'm not even sure what to do with this. Who has ever, EVER said anything like this? I've heard politicians say this in the context of government spending on the environment, but not the military. Chalmers dredges up some obscure government quote about the US economy being able to provide a high standard of living and a strong military- which is true by the way- and then says that this proves his claim of the existence of 'military Keynesianism'. This is really his core argument, and it's a blatant strawman. I won't even go into the "public policies focused on frequent wars" argument, which is a nod to "military-industrial complex" conspiracies. The term comes from Eisenhower, who was primarily referring to pork projects, not imperialism. 'Military Keynesianism' can perhaps explain some of the wasteful spending, though political greed is a better explanation. It certainly doesn't explain the bulk of hawkish military spending since WW2, from the anti-Soviet buildup to the current war on terror.
Here we see Johnson's second broad (false) assumption, that most military spending is done not in the interest of securing the country, but in a vain attempt to do 'make work'. For instance, this passage:
Between the 1940s and 1996, the US spent at least $5.8 trillion on the development, testing and construction of nuclear bombs. By 1967, the peak year of its nuclear stockpile, the US possessed some 32,500 deliverable atomic and hydrogen bombs, none of which, thankfully, was ever used. They perfectly illustrate the Keynesian principle that the government can provide make-work jobs to keep people employed. Nuclear weapons were not just America’s secret weapon, but also its secret economic weapon. As of 2006, we still had 9,960 of them. There is today no sane use for them, while the trillions spent on them could have been used to solve the problems of social security and health care, quality education and access to higher education for all, not to speak of the retention of highly-skilled jobs within the economy.
I'm willing to grant that we didn't REALLY need that many nukes. Why have enough to blanket the earth so many times over when a much smaller number spread out in enough locations could have provided the same deterrence capacity? Chalmers is really slick here. If we didn't need most of the bombs (never mind that many people actually believed they were needed), then most of the spending was wasteful, and it could have been given to starving orphans and union workers! Sadly, no. The production of the first nuclear weapon was several orders of magnitude greater than the production of the last. An enormous amount was spent on theorizing, researching and testing. Even assuming the $5.8 trillion number is accurate, there's no way of knowing how much went to 'excess' or 'make work' nuclear warheads, as opposed to baseline keeping-up-with-Stalin, etc.
The second 'broad aspect' is a thinly-constructed strawman. Let's move on to the third.
in our devotion to socialism (despite our limited resources), we are damaging the long-term fiscal health of the US. These are what economists call opportunity costs, things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have reduced the incentive to achieve, stunted job growth, and created dependency on the government. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than entitlements
Oh wait, we're not allowed to talk about the tens of trillions spent on wealth transfer payments and federal bureaucrats, my bad. Here's what he actually said:
Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of the US. These are what economists call opportunity costs, things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world’s number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing.
Leaving aside left-leaning budget priorities, I will continue to agree that excess military spending burdens the economy. It wastes resources. If only he would make ANY attempt to distinguish between what's necessary, what's debatable, and what's wasteful, but he doesn't. As a result all military spending is maligned as a burden we should seek to be rid of. For instance, he approvingly quotes the following passage:
According to the US Department of Defense, during the four decades from 1947 through 1987 it used (in 1982 dollars) $7.62 trillion in capital resources. In 1985, the Department of Commerce estimated the value of the nation’s plant and equipment, and infrastructure, at just over _$7.29 trillion… The amount spent over that period could have doubled the American capital stock or modernized and replaced its existing stock
YES! What fools we were! We could have just spent ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on defense and we'd be twice as wealthy! Brilliant!
He also says the following:
It was believed that the US could afford both a massive military establishment and a high standard of living, and that it needed both to maintain full employment. But it did not work out that way. By the 1960s it was becoming apparent that turning over the nation’s largest manufacturing enterprises to the Department of Defense and producing goods without any investment or consumption value was starting to crowd out civilian economic activities. The historian Thomas E Woods Jr observes that, during the 1950s and 1960s, between one-third and two-thirds of all US research talent was siphoned off into the military sector
Woods is the source of the earlier 'total military spending versus total infrastructure value' comparison. "Between 1/3rd and 2/3rds"... ummmmmm... okay. Let's take a look at the data used to derive this figure:
Oh there isn't any? Well shucks. I mean, Chalmers isn't making an unsubstantiated claim, he's just approvingly quoting some other guy making an unsubstantiated claim! Can't blame him for that, can we? And when he talks about "turning over the nation’s largest manufacturing enterprises to the Department of Defense", which is his own claim, why that has ample evidence:
Oh, well I'm sure it's in the book!
Chalmers goes on to discuss US manufacturing woes, and by this point in my blog response I'm not even sure if it's worth continuing. He just keeps bringing up military spending numbers and interspersing economic woe numbers and it's the thinnest of thin "correlation equals causation" gruel. Why is the only reason, the ONLY reason for the decline of the US manufacturing sector, military spending? Is it taxes? No, those aren't high enough. Could it have something to do with jobs 'lost' to machines? Considering that the value of goods manufactured in the US is higher than ever, I'm guessing the mechanization of industry plays a significant role. Perhaps globalization, which gives an advantage to foreign manufacturers who use low-cost labor? Maybe, just maybe, cushy union contracts make US labor less competitive compared to said overseas laborers? No. No, my friends, it's all the military.
This is his third and final broad (false) assumption: that defense spending, which accounts for only a couple percent of GDP, was the primary factor in reducing America's manufacturing competitiveness. Just like the only federal spending that matters to him is military spending, the only government resource use and opportunity cost that he sees is for the military.
I'm sure Chalmers provides much more data, lots of quotes of experts who agree with him, and much more logical justification in his books. In the context of a column, however, he's using very few facts to support his biggest logical leaps and lots of space to prove the one thing everyone already knows (the US military spends a lot). As with so many other articles I've targeted, even long ones, going for too many big assertions at once makes it very difficult to properly make a case for any of them. A piece going after military pork, excess bases and redundant nukes would still have the impact of hundreds of billions worth of spending, opportunity costs and so on, and could sow the seeds of his other main points. Instead he uses an overly broad brush to paint all military spending. Maybe he thinks he can get away with it because he's preaching to the choir.
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