Welcome to the Murder Machine

The contract for a new fuel tanker and mid-air refueling boom has been awarded to EADS/Grumman and not the traditional and fully American Boeing Corporation. The current controversy over the award of a military contract to a foreign company provides an example of an economic problem coming to a head. Politicians and military personnel argue over the loss of jobs, or security, or loyalty. They complain that Boeing was too comfortable or that EADS simply had the better presentation.

However, the larger issue remains unspoken. It is the real and unconscious reason why the contract being awarded to a foreign company seems so important and elicits such a strong reaction. It is more than one contract worth so many dollars, providing so many jobs vs. another. It is not fear of this beginning a trend, but that the last true stronghold of American manufacturing, military contracts, might be lost to overseas companies. The trend started long ago, but now at it’s fruition we begin to see not only the effects and implications, but also the truth about a major failure in our economic policy. The dirty little secret is this, what was once the American military industrial complex is now the American military complex.

For years we have lost manufacturing jobs not simply to high wages here, but the quality of our products was inferior. If the demand were higher, people around the world would pay more. And they do pay more. When the product is cheaper and better made, it is that much more difficult to convince companies to build here. But it’s okay, we’ve got the military contracts all locked up.

The funny thing about that is it can actually stultify us in the long run. From the shipping company that cannot get parts for their boats because the pentagon bought them all up for the war to the fact that war no longer means an increase in jobs. We have become so economically dependant on the military, there is little need for an increase in production during wartime, because of the buildup during peacetime.

Then there is the fact that invention, the seed of an economy, flourishes during war. But then we have been inventing all along, and only for war. The citizenry doesn’t get the benefits of the declassification of technology after the wars are over because the wars never started. No innovation for you!

If you thought the addiction to oil was bad, consider correcting this problem. If we cut the military (God forbid!) we cut jobs. Not the extra jobs created during time of war, but jobs that have been constant. The number of people either directly employed by or whose job is dependent upon the machine is in all likelihood unknowable. (Currently Boeing employs approximately 161,000 people, over 71,000 of them in integrated defense alone. By one count the DOD employs over three million people. Though it is difficult to get any accurate numbers or breakdowns because anything that ends in dot gov seems to not only malfunction, but also sabotage anything it touches.) Another dirty little secret? The reason war has traditionally increased a country’s economic strength is because people die, lots of people. When soldiers do not come home, the young step up to fill the labor vacuum. No war, no dead. Modern war, less dead, more disabled. Now we have a surplus of labor and the unemployment rolls increase. Moreover, the astronomical number of disabled vets, once they all get back to our shores, will increase an economic burden which historically has not had to be dealt with on such a scale.

Webster’s defines addiction as [the] “compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal; broadly: persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful.” We have used the military as an addict abuses their drug. We have become dependant on it to achieve an effect for which it was never intended, the stabilization and drive of an economy.

And it’s killing us.