Krugman: Bombs, Bridges and Jobs

[ProSense]

Bombs, Bridges and Jobs

By PAUL KRUGMAN

<...>

Right now the weaponized Keynesians are out in full force...What’s bringing out the military big spenders is the approaching deadline for the so-called supercommittee to agree on a plan for deficit reduction. If no agreement is reached, this failure is supposed to trigger cuts in the defense budget.

Faced with this prospect, 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.

<...>

But why would anyone prefer spending on destruction to spending on construction, prefer building weapons to building bridges?

more

[ProSense]

1. No comment? n/t