Comments on: The New Academy

By: Ezra88

Ezra88 — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:30:48 +0000

I guess the point I should have made is that there are no discussions, of which I am aware, of interim transitions from a war time economy to your so-called freed market. The only related "discussion" is usually limited to the following line, and yours is essentially no different: "alternative institutions will arise out of the shell of the old," or something similar. IOW, it's simply a description of the target goal without discussing the economically catastrophic interim equivalent to the detonation of a nuclear bomb. If the war economy ended tomorrow, massive unemployment and all its rippling effects would ensue. But back to reality. If no planned transition takes place, it appears more likely to me that after the state transfers all of the people's tangible and intangible assets to the "permanent" war machine and the majority of us are reduced to serfs, the system will implode and, as Khrushchev should have said, the USA will bury itself Everyone for himself.

By: appalachianson

appalachianson — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:35:09 +0000

Well, I actually agree with your point. It was just an example I used in the text. Had we not gone to Iraq, we would still be everywhere else, we would still have a war time economy. In "Our Moral Crisis" I write about how terrible war is. Certainly, without wartime expenditures, in a freed, liberated market, public/community consensus would change our educational institutions and make them more affordable. The point was not to use war time spending to pay for education instead. The point is to get the state out of the way and change the role of education - and that the new intellectual class, presently buried in debt, will join the ranks of the 99%, as opposed to apologist to the 1% My recent post Moral Mondays

By: Ezra88

Ezra88 — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 01:23:17 +0000

Mincy wrote: "Just imagine reigning in the war-time state, the trillions spent on Iraq alone would cover the cost of higher education for decades." Let's go whole hog for purposes of argument and eliminate the Department of Defense and all the other associated alphabet agencies. If that's the case, don't forget that those trillions funding the "defense" agencies were either borrowed and will have to be repaid through future taxation or were paid from current and past tax receipts. Let's also not forget that war-related tax transfers line the pockets of millions of workers and owners who produce the war-related goods and services that are also taxed, and who spend their money on the goods and services produced by non-defense related workers and owners. If there's no war, there's no war-related goods or services to tax, which I speculate make up a sizable portion of the trillions. There's also no war-related employment and a probable increase in the demand for safety net services associated with unemployment.

I've never read any articles discussing explicitly the effects of war Keynesian spending policies on taxes and employment, but someone is always writing about channeling war-related tax receipts to their favorite cause even after the industries and workers being taxed are imagined out of existence..