Holy-moly.
And we thought the US military budget was somewhere in the range
of 600 billion. But apparently we were wrong.
According to Al-Jazeera :
The Pentagon has already appropriated $1tn
from US taxpayers to fund a decade of wars. But Columbia professor and Nobel
economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz has controversially argued that the true
figure is "much more like $5tn".What’s a few trillions here and there for the richest country in the world, right?
But if those trillions had gone into raising the minimum wage, without doubt there’d be a lot less tired people in the New York subway.
In addition, all those impressive American millionaires would not be on the edge of hysteria every day because they feared somehow that magic flying carpet would be zipped out from underneath their feet. Which would undoubtedly cut down on the need for anti-anxiety medication. But if you look at it from a GDP perspective, you actually want people hooked up to anti-anxiety medication because the more pharmaceuticals you sell, the more the GDP goes up. And we know the GDP is the indicator that tells the economic health of a country like Gospel truth. So there you go.
To return back to the trillions. It seems the USA is in debt for 17 trillions—out of which 5 trillion was spent on war. Now its pretty clear the USA is going to forge ahead with more ambitious war plans (rumbles of a “New Cold War” is already appearing on news media websites.) in order to keep up the trillions to the war industry.
The problem is that with such excessive amount of funds going to war, and very little going to anything else, the economy starts to suffer. Of course its possible to blame the bad economy on the weather. That’s one strategy.
But ultimately however people start to notice that the economic drag has been going on for years…and years…and years. After which people start to ask: “Is the USA in a major recession?” And: “Can it pay its trillions back?”
Of course, there’s always Chapter 11. But it looks sort of bad when you have to confess to your 194 economic trading partners that not only are you bankrupt but you intend to keep spending a few trillions to keep bombing at least 10 nation states overtly, and surveilling and secretly torturing citizens in the rest of the 184 nation states covertly.
But this sort of economic logic whizzes by the USA’s major policy advisors. Who happen to be:
Hilary Clinton, former secretary of state, potentially running for President in 2016. (Thanks for the photograph: Nick Ut/AP).
And:
John Kerry (thanks Salon.com for the photograph.)
Does it seem the USA and its policy makers are a little out of step with the times? Maybe the state department and foreign policy departments need a “makeover” that takes them out of the Fifties and plops them into now?
And in the same vein, perhaps the USA’s entire national security strategy needs a “makeover”? Clearly they are putting too much faith in robots and too little faith on human beings in terms of how foreign policy is made, and wars fought, in the uber-modern era. Humans could potentially pull them out of their economic mire—if the robots would step down.
But of course the USA is not going to listen. No doubt the budget will put one trillion for robots and none for healthcare and arts funding. Such is the case.
I always find it funny when the USA complains about how little the French work—then they mooch off the social security states in many ways. For instance, lets go back to the Matrix. The stop-gap animation was invented by Michel Gondry, national of lazy nation France, who got a good public school education courtesy of the French nation, and who had the freedom to experiment with crazy animation techniques because the French don’t care if there’s no economic benefits to arts creation.
You better taste this Vodka ad here to get rid of the taste of the Fifties. Its worth a watch (especially if you are a Matrix fan):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SdlAXq45VY
This film was then brought magically into life by Keanu Reeves, Canadian citizen, who got his education in the socially secure nation of Canada. Then the Americans reaped the profits—the Matrix only brought in $463 million.
But of course, horror of horrors, the USA would never fund its public schools or its arts funding to the same level. It would encourage laziness and turn people into incorrigible moochers.
Its best to spend the trillions on drones that kill and surveillance technology that crawl and trawl over massive amounts of data. Surely there's going to be some economic benefits to all that activity. As always, the USA's democratic apparatus knows best.
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