You, Frank Scott, wrote:

>For an extremely quick and slightly over-simplified solution, consider this:
>if we laid off every worker involved in creating products that have nothing
>to do with preserving life and making it better, and paid them-with public
>funds-the same salary they were making, we'd be much better off. In other
>words, the guy making megadeath continues getting his paycheck, but he no
>longer creates megadeath. If necessary, he sits on his ass and does nothing
>until we/he find something useful for him to do with his life.
In a word, massive welfare. Well, that's one of the justifications for
income redistribution in fact, namely that it takes money from rich
people who wouldn't spend all of it, and gives it to people who will,
thus increasing the circulation of commodities, thus enhancing economic
activity, thus benefiting everyone, including the rich person, and on and
on. Marxists talk about crises of overproduction, but the flipside is
underconsumption, which is what government exerts itself to forestall.
Military Keynesianism is just one aspect of the way the system works to
maintain itself. So while you may have eliminated the MIC, you are still
yoked to a system predicated on ever-expanding consumption.

True story: in the last years of the Carter Administration, with
inflation raging at something like 18% and all hell breaking loose, JC's
analysts told him that part of the problem was that with inflation
running so high, the real consumer interest rate was falling, making
purchasing on credit irresistible, fueling more inflation. One answer
they thought, then, was to encourage Americans to stop using their credit
cards.

Accordingly Carter went on the air and urged Americans, as their
patriotic duty, to cut up their Visas. He may even have suggested they
mail them in to the White House, I am not sure. Anyway, everyone figured
there would be at best a marginal decrease in the rate of consumer
spending. They were wrong. Strange as it seems from this side of the
"Greed is Good, Government is Bad" 80s, people actually believed Carter,
and did what he said. They stopped over-spending. The result: the economy
briefly went into absolute freefall. If I recall correctly, the
contraction was on the order of 25%, short term. We're talking Great
Depression-type disaster looming here.

Well, needless to say, this is not exactly what the Carterites had in
mind, and Jimmy had to go back on TV and declare the "emergency" over.
Then everyone staggered back into the White House and had a good, stiff
drink.  You can read about in Greider's book on the Fed, "Secrets of the
Temple." An instructive parable.

_________
Tresy Kilbourne, Seattle WA
"The environment's in trouble -- and the more it suffers, the tougher it
is on your skin."
   --Seventeen Magazine