Do our frequent wars and miltary ops do anything for the 99%?

Well, waiting lists at the VA would definitely be much shorter.

I don't know. I guess you could make an argument on the premise of 'job creation'. I'm sure the employees at Raytheon, Lockheed Martin etc. didn't mind the wars. Then again, that is a small swath of the population.

I don't think there is any sound argument on the premise of 'security'. I don't think our involvement in Afghanistan or Iraq prevented any terrorist attacks within our borders, and this is coming from a guy who literally shed blood in one of those places. If anything, our involvement recruited more terrorists.

 

It didn't benefit the 1% either.

 

Not sure how you change DNA.

America Has Been At War 93% of the Time – Since 1776

Below, I have reproduced a year-by-year timeline of America’s wars, which reveals something quite interesting: since the United States was founded in 1776, she has been at war during 214 out of her 235 calendar years of existence. In other words, there were only 21 calendar years in which the U.S. did not wage any wars.

To put this in perspective:

* Pick any year since 1776 and there is about a 91% chance that America was involved in some war during that calendar year.

* No U.S. president truly qualifies as a peacetime president. Instead, all U.S. presidents can technically be considered “war presidents.”

* The U.S. has never gone a decade without war.

* The only time the U.S. went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Great Depression.

 

Corporate and drug wars... It's all about the money.

 

Some around here would say it thins the heard

Carter tried his best


Rocket River

 

LOL.

Tell that to these guys

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_defense_contractors

 

http://fair-use.org/randolph-bourne/the-state/

Edit...

Copypastefail. Don't know why it pasted with asterisks all over the place. Sry.

 

So, we have empirical evidence that war = not depression. War we must.

 

Yep, security.

 

I think a credible argument could be made for Afghanistan, though I'm not sure I'd believe it. Still, the Taliban was hosting terrorist organizations and they had a number of training camps in the country. I think the war disrupted a state sponsor of terrorism. Now, was it worth the tradeoff in inspiring new recruitments and fanning resentments, I don't know.

More generally on the subject, I think it depends on the war. I think the US materially benefited from fighting WWII. German and Japanese empires would have shut the US out of significant parts of the world. By defeating them, we penetrated and dominated markets in east Asia and in Europe into which we could sell product and from which we extracted resources. That gave an economic uplift to a large cross-section of the US with secure and fairly well-paying jobs.

Other wars don't have as much payoff. Arguably the Korean war, since we at least kept South Korea open to the West. More broadly, if you believed the spread of communism was an existential threat, then all the proxy wars of the Cold War have a payoff -- though I don't believe it ever was an existential threat.

But, anyway you start with setting aside all that other stuff that might make wars worth fighting and then conclude we're better off without these wars without ever bringing those things back in. Defeating ISIS, for example, probably isn't an NPV positive project for us. Syria doesn't matter to our financial wellbeing, and we're not going to take any net benefit from fighting or defeating them. But, they cut off Americans' heads, they burn infidels, they enslave women, they maim boys who won't fight -- the 99% here have an interest in their defeat even when there is no benefit to us, just because it's right. So I think looking to tangible benefits is useful, but it's too narrow.

 

Maybe Trump is the change we need to alter that DNA?

My magic eight ball says "doubtful" but could he do any worse than past presidents when it comes to foreign policy?

 

What do you mean "our" wars, and how would "we" be better off? Higher oil prices, higher manufacturing prices, etc, etc.

 

Wouldn't a more productive approach towards criticizing bad policy be noting that the policies are more or less failures by means of their own stated goals ("we'll bring peace and democracy to the mideast via aimless war enabling various undemocratic regimes") rather than saying "it never did anything for the little guy!"

Honestly, glynch you are embarrassing sometimes, all you do is engineer small victories from the Mr. Clutches of the universe who go home, secure in their incoherent Lubbock-formed worldview after exchanging a few platitudes as part of your poorly executed forays.

 

It creates design, domestic manufacturing and salaried office work as well as massive commodity purchases with no enterprise accountability towards competitive market forces or credit solvency. Cynically enough I'm skeptical most business owners, non-humanities college grads, or entrenched corporate staffers identify with enough of the rest of the population to mobilize a 99%.

 

It creates lots and lots of jobs.

 

Yes, everyone can always do worse. Every Democrat president after Zachary Taylor became the worst in history up to that point, every president after Eisenhower was a WWII vet and couldn't fathom an American retreat, so they each unnecessarily escalated Vietnam. Harding, Coolidge and Hoover clearly missed something.

 

In what way does the United States exploit poor countries?