The words of a Republican American President 45 years later. The Economy needs wars.

In 1961, in his farewell speech (Military-Industrial Complex Speech) Eisenhower pointed out that the USA was moving into a dangerous direction: creating the situation that the economy depended on the armaments industry.
Which means: making it an economic neccesity to fight wars. Wars need to be made, regardless of political neccesity, foreign policy, international legality or voters. If there is no war, the USA suffers economically.

Now, 45 years later, do you think that the USA is in a situation where it needs a war once in a while for economical reasons?

And the links:
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-industrial_complex

 

Considering that the amount of money spent on the Iraq war is astronomical and could have been spent at home, I would say that no, the US doesn't need wars to fund its economy. Wars create debt. However, reality seems to prove me wrong, since the US is constantly at war.

 

What he said.

I don't think Lockheed-Martin and Boeing are fueling a lot of economic expansion in this nation.

 

The irony.

Don't know how big thr american arms industry is, but if it's big enough to exert such control over issues like palestine then pretty big I guess.

Mabye the signs of a new cold war with the chinese and/or russian spheres will sustain it with arms stockpiling? But perhaps the idea thatr the economy revolves around war is just a re worked version that economy needs demand and consumption ( not the disease before some smart arse says so ¬_&#172...

 

Wars are screwing the american economy right now, as they always did.

 

Lets try going without a war for 40 years, and we'll find out.

 

I'd say that some companies do benefit from the wars, and the question is, how much of a lobbying power do they have? Apparently, quite a lot.

Unfortunately, what's good for these companies is not what's good for the US as a whole.

 

QFT .

 

Hey, AVN, long time no see

 

Indeed. Do we really need missile defense? No. But corporations do.

edit: masquerouge is a meaniehead.

 

Corporations, corporations.

 

War has stopped being profitable since about the roman times when it was victor's spoils (with the exception of africa and resource fighting). War is bad for standards of living, and what is the point of good economy if not to improve standarts of living?

Granted though, it can sometime "kickstart" a sleepy economy.

 

Hell no, war is only good for pissing away money. Now there is some truth to what Masquerouge said. Its not as bad as some may believe as the lobbyist control or even have a say when we go to war, (Iraq afgah ect.). But when it comes to where bases get opened up, what new planes/weapons system get made and other crap like this ABM system, then oh yea, they have there hand in the cookie jar.

But keep in mind I said hand in the cookie jar, there are way too many other hands in that jar for anyone to control.

 

Yes a war is needed once in a while, not only to fund the arm-manufacturers, but to also secure cheap (stolen)resources, so, some can still continue to believe the myth of the best, all-justice Democracy in the world(this is, at the same time, true and not true; it's amazing! )

 

QFT

 

Perhaps it is the military that needs wars. A nation wouldn't want to have its military become out of shape.

 

Aww misclicked vote. Eisenhower's talk of a military-industrial complex is very Cold War in my opinion and he was basically still in that mindset, when major corporations did make a lot of money and hold a lot of power in keeping the status quo of a Cold War, vestiges of an unwillingness to lose profits after WWII. One only needs to examine the Iraqi war, and what war has become in the world of today, to show that the economy most definitely does not need wars. The dependence on oil and the huge costs involved in a society that values soldier's lives much more highly than they did before have seen to that.

 

Masquerouge is basically right, although it probably more complex than that.

 

The money could just as easily be thrown away elsewhere, like medicine. Or we could start actually throwing away everything we buy every 6-12 months for something new. Either way, it's making it's way back into the economy, paying for a good that needs to be bought again and again (like blown up tanks, just in this case severed limbs or unnecessary crap, which is the real backbone of any modern economy ).

 

The more freely money flows, the better the economy. The government spends exhorbinant sums of money funding the war effort; money going to companies in the states. These companies need to hire and pay people, those people spend their money and the wheel goes round. The US economy is in pretty great shape right now. Record Dow over and over, less than 5% unemployment, high consumer confidence. I'd say war isn't hurting the economy. Historically, war has done things like take us out of the Great Depression and coincided with things like the end of mild recessions. Maybe dumb luck, maybe not.

I'm not making an argument that the money is better spent in war than in other endevours in the economic arena. Not at all. I'm just saying....