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Krugman: War Is BAD for the Economy
We pointed out in 2009 that war is bad for the American economy. We noted in 2012 that military spending as “stimulus” can’t work, because conditions are different than they were in World War II.
We’ve reported for years that economists (like Paul Krugman) who believe that war stimulates the economy are wrong. We exhaustively debunked this claim again just last month.
Mr. Krugman has now changed his mind. He wrote yesterday in the New York Times:
If you’re a modern, wealthy nation, however, war — even easy, victorious war — doesn’t pay. And this has been true for a long time. In his famous 1910 book “The Great Illusion,” the British journalist Norman Angell argued that “military power is socially and economically futile.” As he pointed out, in an interdependent world (which already existed in the age of steamships, railroads, and the telegraph), war would necessarily inflict severe economic harm even on the victor. Furthermore, it’s very hard to extract golden eggs from sophisticated economies without killing the goose in the process.
We might add that modern war is very, very expensive. For example, by any estimate the eventual costs (including things like veterans’ care) of the Iraq war will end up being well over $1 trillion, that is, many times Iraq’s entire G.D.P.
So the thesis of “The Great Illusion” was right: Modern nations can’t enrich themselves by waging war.
This is a huge sea-change from America's best-known Keynesian, and we thank Mr. Krugman for re-examining the evidence.
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Systemic neoliberal “rationalism” recruited to prepare us for nuclear war?
War is the father of the all interessting competition launched by it. Salt there is aimed to loot people, the owns, it must be said, as well the enemie's ones.
The criminal resolving joke involved strikes peak if it makes possible to suck all your attention for no return.
That the core of the business itself had become unattractive sounds reasonable because of that and the developed carry out of that as it has been always for proper resolving people adjusted to the origine of our moral code.
That the war business had become unattractive in its own terms, well that's was to get always also from a platform of a paying and not a winning participant to it.
To underly the project with facts would ask to investigate the broken moral code, but that's no buisness of concern. The business of concern is to make that joke secure so no one has a chance to stay absent to the game and to refuse the wanted, at pay order before gun point.
It's another tower of Babel, consuming all the precious intelligence we actually are able to provide to construct it.
This is sloppy; issues are getting intermingled here. Yes, war is bad. Because killing people is bad.
But let's not be dishonest about history's lessons. Winning a war is an economic boon for a nation. Krugman's not talking about wars, though, he's talking about America's recent 'military actions.'
Krugman's piece is not designed to remind people about what God, Jesus, or the Devil think about war. it's designed to preach Keynesianism. Krugman, of course, believes it was Keynes - and not WWII's scarcity-enforced savings and cultural shift to work-glorification - that pulled America out of the great depression quagmire. I'd argue that without getting involved on the winning side in the two Great Wars, the U.S. would still be in the same economic league as Brazil, as was the case in 1900.
Again, though, this fluff piece uses as examples some recent "military actions." Limited strategic tussles that don't involve a nation's population to any significant degree. The Falklands. Iraq. And is this really an entreaty to Russia to stop messing with the Ukraine because war doesn't pay?!? Clearly, Russia's interest in the Ukraine is geo-strategic. Google 'oil pipelines ukraine' for clarification. A won war in the Ukraine would pay big for Russia.
Frankly, I'm surprised Tyler et.al. would honor this piece with a bump to ZH. What am I missing?
"Winning a war is an economic boon for a nation."
==================================
So for example, Britain was rolling in the dough by 1945, was it? Exactly how much of an "economic boon" were those six years of war?
Every bomb, tank, and plane manufactured for warfare is a waste of productive resources, a window made to be broken.
If there is no war, you might as well have just burned the resources that went into producing them. Likewise, if there IS a war, those same bombs, tanks, and planed will be expended (destroyed), along with extra resource destruction in the form of whatever they are used on (example, enemy tanks and planes). Double waste.
Finally, if you win, you get to loot whatever the enemy has left.....oh wait, there isn't much of that (witness Germany's crushing debts after WW1 and what that in turn led to, or the need to completely rebuild much of central Europe after WW2).
They forfeited their winnings to Uncle Scam.
stupid ignorant whitey goyim war always benefits the few and rarely the many. you think that they would be waging war if there was no benefit? Cui Bono
War for free! learned that trick in Vietnam just print thats all it takes a few keystrokes we could be having wars all over the place but you stupid whitey goy protest against the blood shed your Talmudic Masters wish to partake in! they will reflect their bloodlust upon you soon enuff for gettin in their way! hedge accordingly whitey goyim!
one word describes krugman - a**hole and all the word portends.
one word describes krugman's policies - a**holish and all the word portends.
haven't we had enuf keynesian bs?
just goes to show that if you chat shit long enough eventually you'll have and accident and say something true.
Krugman's shift portends the stance of the Oligrachs as Putin with the financial backing of BRICS has raised the cost of wars for US. BRICS encourage long drawn out conflicts that drain US resources better even with more QEs.
TBTF Banks will face an implosion in their derivatives with further diminution of their deemed suckers in foreign investors.
Big Oil finding it hard to control the leaks from ME to BRICS and infrastructure investments in these volatile place will not fly with global investors.
Big Pharmas will face even more market closures to their wares.
US$ hegemony fading. Failing first as a store of value but longer as a medium for global txn i.e. as a measurement unit.
US Defense Industry must be appeased so thru proxy states the blind eye activated for them to sell their wares to the BRICS.
EC will be the proxy for the test of the descalation and either muddle along or be the game changer in tilting towards Russia for its long term significance.
People everywhere do not matter in these calculations.
The Krugbeast
say no more
I read the article yesterday. Krugman was advocating for war against Russia and Putin. His article blames Russia for the Ukraining problem and implies that war with Russia is acceptable. He says that the Russia economy is dying and that is why Putin moved into Ukraine. I came away from the article realizing that Krugman is a paid spokesmen for US psych ops, both domestic economics and foreign aggression.
I found that to be an informative article, which pointed out a significant change in the presentation of opinion by a relatively well-known talking head, who previously was saying much more stupid things about this topic, as was rightly criticized by earlier articles. It was honourable for George Washington to point that surprising change out. INDEED "This is a huge sea-change from America's best-known Keynesian, and we thank Mr. Krugman for re-examining the evidence."
However, I still I believe that, generally speaking, the vast majority of people are light years away from having a better theory of war, because that would have to be inside of a better theory of artificial selection, which in turn is contexted inside of the theory of natural selection, which in turn are basically manifestations of general energy systems. The production of destruction to control production is absolutely vital to the economy. A better form of warfare, manifesting as better death controlling murder systems, is the best thing which could be done for the economy. Furthermore, that is the only basis upon which a real, radical, revolution in the monetary and taxation systems could be possible, in order to provide systems of incentives which facilitated the development of better human, industrial and natural ecologies.
Post-modernizing warfare has become runaway psychotic criminal insanity, because it is based on a long history of successful warfare by backing up deceits with destruction, gradually becoming the foundation for successful finance based on enforced frauds. Since almost nobody bothers to properly trace those psychological and political habits back to their origins, the analysis of those situations tends to stay superficial, and the most of the proposed "solutions" to those problems are still worse than trivial absurdities.
Militarism, or the ideology of the murder system, deserves to be recognized as the most important system of understanding, because the ways that human beings operate their death controlling murder systems are the most important things they do, especially because the murder systems back up the money systems, because the debt controls depend upon the death controls.
Human history has developed post-modernizing warfare to become the runaway criminal insanities, due to war becoming a racket operated by the banksters, where the "money" to pay for that gets made out of nothing as debts. Therefore, the basic systems for a few Centuries have been debt slavery backed up by wars based on deceits. That has been pumped up by advancing science and technology to become globalized electronic fiat money frauds, backed by the threat of the force of weapons of mass destruction. As the debt slavery has generated numbers which have become debt insanities, we are on the verge of death insanities being provoked. That is especially acute because events like those on 9/11/2001, and the financial crises in 2008, were both deliberately engineered by the ruling classes, in order to advance their overall agenda of deceitful wars to continue to back up more debt slavery, despite that both of those kinds of wars and debts have gone way too far into the zones of psychotic insanities.
Unfortunately, there are no good reasons to believe that our civilization can spare itself from its own overall mad self-destruction, due to the basically MAD systems of Money As Debt and Mutual Assured Destruction. That is particularly tragic because, according to more sublimely abstract theory, the human species could go through intellectual scientific revolutions in order to develop better political science, in order to cope with the advancements in other sciences.
Of course, almost nobody at the present time will understand that, nor want to understand that, because the genuine and realistic solutions require that enough people understand that there should be developed better death controls, operated through better murder systems, in ways which both those in the established systems, and in the controlled opposition groups, do not want to even think about, much less admit and address. What we need are profound paradigm shifts in militarism, so that we are able to understand everything that civilization does inside the context of military ethics. In order words, we should be understanding the energy systems of natural selection better, so that human artificial selection systems could be understood better, and therefore, resolve the chronic political problems inherent in the nature of life better.
However, basically none of the old-fashioned religions or ideologies, can cope with the effects of the advances of science and technology upon society, and that includes the current orthodox versions of the philosophy of science, which also similarly suffered from being historically dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, and thus, mainstream science became mostly another pathetic form of controlled opposition, like the other various kinds of religions and ideologies also were.
The history of our death controls being most successfully done through the maximum possible deceits, while our debt controls were then built on that foundation to be done on the basis of the maximum possible frauds, makes it practically impossible for most people to think outside of that box. Instead, there are the false dualities, or presumptive fundamental dichotomies, sustaining various kinds of impossible ideals, which always backfire badly, and make the opposite happen in the real world, because they understand the mechanisms manifesting those problems backwards, and furthermore, go to the wrong pole of the false duality in order to attempt to establish spurious unity.
We should be appreciating the ways of thinking that made progress in physical and biological sciences, etc., possible, in order to attempt to apply that mode of thinking to political science. That is theoretically possible, however, it makes all other paradigm shifts in the history of science look like child's play by comparison. Some of the greatest paradoxes, which run throughout civilization, were due to the ways that there are combined money/murder systems, which were in feedback loops where the money paid for the murders, that backed up that money, which situation then follows through all of the rest of the paradoxes, such as that civilization has developed technologies which are trillions of times more powerful and capable (and headed towards quadrillions or more, IF civilization continues to survive), while those are still channeled through social pyramid systems, which are based on their history of backing up lies with violence.
In that context, we constantly observe sterile debates between deceitful murder systems, backing up fraudulent monetary systems, opposed by controlled opposition groups which do not provide better death controls to back up better debt controls, but rather, promote the impossible ideals that no such systems should exist at all. Instead of saner public debates about human, industrial and natural ecologies, which attempt to understand the ways that human artificial selection systems must exist within natural selection systems, we have ridiculously bogus debates between the established systems of debt slavery, backed by wars based on deceits, opposed by people who suggest "solutions" in which there would not be any self-conscious murder systems, backing up money systems.
Although it was somewhat surprising that Krugman would belatedly recognize the obvious facts that post-modernizing warfare has become insane to the point of being suicidal, and certainly provides no lasting benefits in that context (even to the banksters, and their buddies, who thereby temporarily accumulate more of the social tokens of apparent "wealth" in the form of money as debt), obviously Krugman is still mostly a mainstream moron.
Similarly, I still have not detected any significant ways in which George Washington's articles have moved past being what I expect from reactionary revolutionaries, which is about 90%, or more, excellent analysis, followed by implicit, or even sometimes explicit, 10%, or less, collapse back to the bullshit "solutions" based on promoting impossible ideals, which shall surely continue to cause the opposite to happen in the real world.
Ideally, enough human beings should go through a real, radical revolution in the ways that they understand energy systems, which then applies throughout natural energy systems, and their forms of natural selection for evolutionary ecologies, and so, also applies to human energy systems, which manifest their forms of artificial selection, such as the murder systems backing up the money systems, which in turn pay for the murder systems to continue to back those money systems up.
At the present time, post-modernizing warfare has become psychotic insanity, because we are looking at the runaway rackets of the banksters becoming too MAD. However, the necessarily solutions require that we change the paradigms throughout political science, and especially change our militarism, so that we operate our murder system death controls in profoundly different ways, because we understand those death controls in profoundly different ways, which are consistent with understanding general energy systems better.
The real solutions to our problems are better death controls to back up better debt controls. The only ways to have a better combined murder/money system is to understand those systems better. However, that requires understanding how and why the currently established systems are the result of thousands of years of social successes and triumphs based on backing up lies with violence. That history has built the established systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which are runaway debt slavery, backed by wars based on deceits, whose excessive "success" has paradoxically become psychotic insanities, which threaten to madly destroy themselves (and indeed, may have already gone too far to stop actually doing that anyway.)
The deeper issues are that there must necessarily be some murder systems, because it is impossible for human beings to get out of the context of natural selection pressures. However, virtually everyone inside of the established systems, and their controlled opposition groups, does not want to think sufficiently differently. Ideally, we should change the way that we think about political science in ways which are based on paradigm shifts just as big, or even bigger, than the paradigm shifts which sciences such as physics and biology have already gone through.
In my view, that is theoretically possible, but that appears to be practically political impossible at the present time, because both the established systems and their controlled opposition groups are attached to their own world views. I would suggest that the majority of readers of Zero Hedge already consider it an obvious truism that the government has become the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gang of criminals. (A fairly large number of the general public are now also intuitively aware of that, although they still appear to be a minority.) HOWEVER, I regard almost all the main articles published on Zero Hedge, as well as about half the comments upon those articles, to continue to be based on old-fashioned religions and ideologies, which therefore continue to promote impossible ideals as the source of the "solutions" to those runaway problems.
In my view, we must embrace how and why warfare and weapons were the most important things throughout the history of civilization, and therefore, the society we live in today has a basically military structure. It does not enough good for more people to become informed enough to recognize the relatively obvious truism that the government has become the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, unless we then move on to a better understanding of how and why that happened, which enabled us to then develop better organized crime, controlled by a better organized gang of criminals.
Nothing that I am saying is actually all that far fetched, in theory, because merely by changing one's perceptual paradigms one can perceive that everything I am talking about already exists, and so, is already developing. Of course, it appears like it would take a prodigious series of political miracles for enough people to go through deeper analysis, in order to then understand better solutions, that were consistent with the results of that analysis, because, at the present time, it almost always happens that relatively good analysis is then followed by collapse back to bullshit "solutions" based on the same old-fashioned impossible ideals.
ANYONE WHO HAD BEEN SERIOUSLY THINKING ABOUT WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION SEVERAL DECADES AGO WOULD HAVE COME TO THE CONCLUSIONS THAT KRUGMAN HAS BELATEDLY RECOGNIZED!
However, those who have done that somewhat then still tended to propose the problems through false dualities, like Peace versus Annihilation, rather than through the mechanisms of better death controls. Since I have been worried about economic exponential growth, backed up by weapons of mass destruction, for several decades I have been attempting to develop better ways to understand human systems of artificial selection, operating their death controls. Ideally, we should go through more real, radical, revolution, based on more radical truths, which are more consistent with having also gone through systematic intellectual scientific revolutions.
At the present time, we are watching our civilization using more and more fantastic special effects, to tell the same old stories, such as we now have globalized electronic frauds, backed by the force of atomic bombs, operating the banksters' and their buddies' rackets of runaway debt slavery, backed by wars based on deceits. At the same time, larger and larger numbers of people are becoming somewhat aware of those basic social facts. However, so far, I see practically nothing more in the way of deeper understanding of the chronic political problems inherent in the nature of life, which created the natural selection forces, which manifested through the history of the combined money/murder systems, operating the current forms of artificial selections through the maximum possible deceits and frauds!
The 2008 economic crash was _not_ engineered by the ruling classes. They did not know what hit them until consensus was achieved on what did it. Everything the ruling classes have done since 2008 has failed and everyone throughout the world in economics knows it now. Even Bernanke is coming around to the failure. American 'knowhow' does not know even elementary mathematics or elementary economics.
Wall Street was turned into a street shell game when Glass-Steagall
was ousted by Reagan/Greenspan/Rubin/Summers. These criminals
brewed up the insanity that you keep refering to. The 'ruling classes'
just went along for the ride thinking there was personal gain to be had in terms of collusion. They were wrong!!!
The funny thing is there were many who predicted it years before it happened. So those in charge of the US monetary policy were either dumb or did so deliberately.
Moreover, if you believe they engineered the collapse, their policies after 2008 didn't fail, because the objective of the 2008 policies was not to restore economic growth in the West, but to transfer wealth from the bottom 90% (whatever they had) to the top 1% which they have been doing admirably well.
Whether there will be a sudden economic collapse or slow burn remains to be seen, but there is definitely not going to be any economic recovery in the West (not for the majority of the people anyway).
Of course, I agree with you, Global Observer.
There were good reasons why one of the better documentaries about the details regarding the 2008 financial crises was called "INSIDE JOB."
http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/
http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/inside_job_2010/
Similarly, there is no doubt that events on 9/11/2001 must have been an inside job. All of those kinds of events continue to be fantastically successful in the short and medium term for those people who actually participate in making them happen, and covering up what really happened, so that the "solutions" to those "problems" become "reactions" that make the overall situation get even worse.
The only way to understand the behavior of American society is that its political processes have been captured by the best organized gangs of criminals. However, my main point is that deeper understanding of that does NOT lead to facile resolutions based on "stopping" human society from being operated according to the principles and methods of organized crime. Rather, my view is that better resolutions of those situations could only follow from a greater use of information and higher consciousness about the FACTS that human beings, after they are defined as separate from their environment, necessarily act as robbers in their environment.
Our society is dominated by runaway, utterly unapologetic, forms of organized lies operating robberies. We are still basically hunter gatherers, and must necessarily be, due to the way that human beings necessarily perceive the world. However, we no longer offer an apology or appreciation towards those others we kill to live. It would be possible to operate that better IF more people perceived that better. However, at the present time everyone is caught inside of the metastasizing cancer of the monetary systems, where everything that every individual desires as their private property sustains the privatization of the planet.
In the longer term, that runaway privatization of the planet will become suicidal for the human species. However, since those who are the best at being dishonest and backing that up with violence are supported by enough other people, those systems of privatization of the environment, based on lies backed by violence, have become criminally insane runaways. The grand paradox is the short-term success of enforced frauds destroys itself in the longer term. However, as far as I can tell now, nothing is going to be able to stop that from happening.
Both the next 9/11 and the next 2008 are reasonably expected to be much worse, because nothing stopped that runaway success of deceitful wars and enforced frauds from getting worse, faster. In my view anyone still believing in Hanlon's Razor with regard to the events on 9/11, or culminating in 2008, that those were more due to stupidity than malice, is maintaining that opinion on the basis of deliberate ignorance towards the readily available information that provides way too many dots of data to avoid the conclusions that those events were deliberate inside jobs.
More importantly, a deeper analysis of how and why the best organized gangs of criminals control civilization should understand that as a manifestation of the ways that general energy systems work through human beings. The POINT of my comment is that it is NOT good enough to reveal the ruling classes operate through enforced frauds, but then recommend the impossible ideal that should be stopped. THE FLOW OF ENERGY CAN NOT BE STOPPED. ENERGY DIRECTS ITS OWN TRANSFORMATIONS: better dynamic equilibria between the different systems of organized lies operating robberies is possible. BUT, stopping any from existing is NOT possible!
After we define any human beings as separate from their environment, then they automatically are entropic pumps of energy, whose functions are best described by the principles and methods of organized crime. Our civilization is dominated by the best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, because it is a system of lies operating robberies. However, the controlled opposition to those system are spouting the same bullshit, and therefore, their kinds of "solutions" also always backfire badly.
Human beings, as soon as we define them as separate from the environment, are always in a perpetual state of war. There is never any peace possible as long as we look at finite human beings, who operate as entropic pumps of energy. Groups of human beings are necessarily gangs of robbers. Politics is supposed to endeavour to balance that out better. However, too many people have been brainwashed too much to believe in bullshit to enable our politics to work anymore.
It is impossible to underestimate the degree to which people understand things backwards when they do not understand that the ruling classes were necessarily the best organized gangs of criminals, who captured control over governments, in order to legalize their crimes, including wars, which were organized crime on a large scale. The vast majority of people were conditioned to become Zombie Sheeple, while the controlled opposition groups are a range of Black Sheeple, promoting the impossible goals that everyone should become better Sheeple.
IN FACT, human beings are basically wolves, while the top wolves were the ruling classes, who worked to brainwash other people to become sheep. (Of course, the top wolves excelled at appearing in sheep's clothing.) The better resolutions to our runaway problems are for everyone to become better wolves. That is, we need better death controls. Promoting NO death controls is to promote something which is NOT possible, and therefore, must cause the opposite to happen in the real world.
Our current tragedies stem from too many people being too successfully brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit social stories, which are BACKWARDS, on level after level, while the controlled opposition groups stay within that same backwards world view too. Therefore, we can not apply better scientific understanding of human energy systems, because almost everyone is taught to perceive those backwards, and conditioned to want to continue to perceive those backwards. Indeed, that degree perceiving things backwards extends through the philosophy of science, just as much, if not more so, than throughout politics!
not good for the economy but great for a reset. not only does it get rid of excess labor by killing them it also destroys obsolete capital allowing new and improved capital to replace it. massive capital and labor destruction is a good thing for destroying malinvestment even if war is malinvestment itself. war is ultimately good. let the killing begin.
call it sociopathic(or psychopathic if you prefer) economics. it is the breakfast of champions. ask any empire.
I think we tend to over intellectualize the war motives, much as those mush mouths on nature programs do. Oh my, the killing of the cubs was necessary because the new king wants to pass along his genes. Horseshit.
He kills the little parasites because he killed their daddy because he needed cheap help, and he was horny. Those little suckling bastards were preventing mama from coming into heat.
What you say is true of the symptoms and results but the driving force behind wars is the simple P-A-P, protein, alcohol and poontang. Anything beyond is intellectualization.
The Great Depression happened during peace time. One can make the case that war and peace are bad for the economy.
Krugman is a tool of the government/media/banker complex used by the NY Times. He hammers in the nails for war when needed and pulls out the nails for war when needed. To believe Krugman thinks is an error. Krugman is only a tool used by his owners. To say he's a sophist would provide the false impression that he has intelligence.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/bitcoin-is-evil/?_php=true&_...
Krugman's "opinion" article actually beats the drums for war against Russia if you read between the lines. Plenty of broken windows there.
Whatever pays the bills fits with most of that crowd.
War was turning a profit for the USA pre-2008 economic crash of derivatives. Post-2008 crash of derivatives indicates more crashes in derivatives and that's why Professor Krugman is now stating that war does not help the economy. Krugman cannot be found to state anything like this pre-2008. Moreover, the USA embarked on an aggressive war plan through the CFR agenda and the 911 incursions into Iraq. Post-2008 the USA cannot even afford to fend off domestic attacks let alone foreign affairs wars. The USA
Government is incompetent to run a PopCorn stand let alone millions of human beings. American hubris knows no bounds in terms of outright stupidity and ignorance. Dr. Krugman
is just one of the bobble heads that Americans happen to recognize and listen to on a monthly basis, Z/H.
What about Hurricanes Pauly ? Broken window fallacy much ?
hurricane andrew provided an economic boon to south florida. the opportunity costs were borne by other communities that lost population(a lot of new residents permanently moved to south florida) and insurance providers who were later paid by the insured in form of premiums, but south florida benefited from the billions of dollars of new money spent rebuilding and the increased population. on the other hand, the gulf coast and nola suffered through the hurricane and the aftermath as a lot of the destruction was simply cleared away and never rebuilt and people moved away.
this make me VERY VERY NERVOUS. VERY. he has changed the song and dance. think about it - US and YOU and me are fcking muppets for him.
now - you tell me.
i can't help myself, sorry to be rude but, i am going to answer my own question. what's in the cards? what is he REALLY wanting? he will be laughing his way to the bank, thinking he covered his ass and did NOT claim the coming wars were good. and YOU and ME get our assed strewn across acres....
what did goldman have to sell you today? the tribe speaks, everybody listens.
All depends on how you look at war.
As a one off, it is an expense but if you view it as a means of controlling and securing a market for a countries goods then maybe not so bad.
Afghanistan cost a lot but what was the cost to the US economy of 9/11 how about if just once a year another 9/11 attack occured. Putting aside morality I think attacking Afghanistan was cheaper. Now did we have to go to war to stop Bin Laden or were there cheaper/ more effective ways to stop, probably but I think the War in Afghanistan was cheaper than doing nothing.
Vietnam? Who knows but one likely scenario would have been South East Asia even more under the spell of China and probably not a China as modern and western and capitalist as exists now (mild sarcasm)
Not saying war does not suck but it can beat the alternative. That said many great nations/kingdoms/states have ruined themselves going to war. The calculation is far from simple, even in hindsight.
You guys are missing the point. Note I said "Putting aside morality"
1) I agree war is bad but war is sometimes necessary. Unfortunately there will always be a Hitler, a Genghis Khan or an Isis ready to pounce on the weak. For some peace is just an opportunity to reload.
2) The US Navy was created to defend against the Barbary pirates attacking American shipping back in the 1780's. Economically the amount invested to protect American trade and shipping was a positive and I would like to anyone America's access to all the worlds ports is an economic loss to the cost of maintaining a Navy. My bitch is the rest of the world pretty much gets a free ride.
3)Again putting aside morality and American lives lost, the economic benefit of saving South Korea has clearly been a net win economically for the USA. I also think Korea should be contributing a lot more to their own defense but that is a different issue.
4) I think Afghanistan was a stupid war and the alleged goal of taking out Bin Laden could have been accomplished in am much more economic fashion, but it would not take to many 9/11's to justify the war's cost economically. Did not notice any one disputing that point.
5) Iraq was a totally idiotic war and not economically justifiable but that does not mean all wars can't be justified economically.
The only difference between the 3rd reich and the current american government that the nazis were honest about their goals.
No, it doesn't 'depend on how you look at it': war is, and always has been, a net negative for everybody in all societies involved in conflict, except for the political class and their cronies.
The lowest-cost way for a society to obtain access to resources is, always was, and always will be... trade.
War is never about obtaining resources in such a way as to reduce the cost to the average citizen in the invader society. To the extent that it is about obtaining control over resources, it is about increasing the profit stream to cronies, with the cost of acquisition underwritten by the tax base.
The only people for whom 'invasion and conquest' confers a direct net benefit, are the cronies who obtain exploitation rights over conquered resources (since the acquisition costs are subsidised by taxpayers in the invading country, there is a de facto subsidy of the acquisition by the taxbase in the conquering country).
There is also a secondary, 'revaluation effect': if you invade a place and add risk premium to the price of a resource (say oil), then cronies with existing stockpiles of oil receive a revaluation (upward) of their holdings. So there is a two-pronged advantage to cronyism - which is why invasions occur in places rich in resources that the crony classes already own: if scumbag parasites like Cheney owned banana stocks, the US would have invaded Guatemala.
Modern context: Cheney and the rest of the Death Machine vampires have become rich beyond imagining, as a result of a war that the US has objectively LOST... while the average Yank taxpayer has gone backwards (both in terms of median income, and in terms of median household wealth).
Meanwhile the major shareholders in KBR, Halliburton, L3, Academi (formerly Blackwater and Xe), Raytheon, General Dynamics and so forth have made out like fucking bandits (because that's what they are: if your entire revenue depends on the coercive taxation power of the State, your'e a welfare recipient).
Randolph Bourne famously wrote "War is the Health of the State"... he pointedly distinguished the State, from the society on which the State parasitises. And as Smedley Butler wrote: War is a Racket.
Arthur - you are correct. war is a WONDERFUL thing. for everybody. please send me your contact information and i would gladly send you a fruitcake for xmas wherever you are stationed. and thanks bud, for keeping the USA free.
How this subject ever came up for debate is beyond comprehension. The rumor, in so much as modern times, there were no doubt Roman economists spewing the same nonsensical dogma around the time of Christ, started sometime after World War 2 with a historically mistaken interpretation of recovery data appearing to suggest that the post war years were an immediate and glorious boom time.
But a simple inspection would seem to suffice. The idea that human production built for the purpose of destruction would result in its opposite, ie prosperity, is of course absurd.
That is unless you are the one counterfeiting the money in which case war is a grand success...
Many ancient empires expanded from winning wars. Blessed are the peacemakers but THERE WILL BE wars and rumors of wars. If you care not to have a formidable military force to carry a big stick (not necessarily using it) expect to be pushed around like a floor mop by a Putin or China. Nevertheless war is a lose lose situation especially while it is being fought but someone will eventually win. The superior military usually prevails. Pick the winner. You or them. Humans in their current condition will fight wars.
Kurgman, for all his radical veneer, reveals himself in this NYT article as an Establishment Liberal lapdog.
His argument is based on the premise that what matters is how the whole nation benefits or loses from a war, which is useful for us to know but has no power for explaining why they happen. If he were honest about this though he would be biting the hand that feeds him.
The reason for Krugman's conversion is apparently so he can use it to beat Putin about the head for his venal stupidity in thinking that taking Crimea and launching a war of aggression against Ukraine would enrich Russia. In making this argument he reveals either an appalling ignorance of what's going on in Ukraine and how Russia's leadership sees the stakes, or a craven dishonesty.
Remind me again - how is the USAF dropping bombs on US provided tanks in Iraq different than putting glue in the engine of working cars so that the poor can not use them to go to work (Cash for Clunkers).
only someone trained in economics could potentially think war is "economical".
This is a good point. How about deterrence though?
I mean take a look at Missouri. "Talk about epic deterrence failure." And those dudes are loaded for BEAR. "Nay, veerily. Flash mob at 3rd and 21st" now.
"Light 'em up! Light 'em up! Get some!" Maybe the President should threaten the use of a tactical nuclear strike...against St Loius of course...so we can get the proper "take charge attitude."
When the tax system becomes so corrupt that poor and middle class people agree and want a flat tax, you know you have a mess. That is what happened to Slovakia.
The US is getting closer and closer to being the same. People are just giving up....
War only benefits two groups(in the short term). The military industrial complex and the banks that finance both sides of the conflict. Eventually, both will cannibalize the economy intolerable it is ruined.
Krugman did not "change his mind." He got new orders.
An American, not US subject.
Krugman is one of those Things from the NYT. (now owned by Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecommunications Gangster)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtgFKdWcKXY
War is about prey , not economics .
See
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2012/11/origins-of-peace-and-war-ii.html
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2008/03/origin-of-rule-of-law.html
Have any of you geniuses actually read the links? The first states that Krugman observed that WWII was the impetious behind the end of the Depression and that PREPARING for a war (i.e., the government side of the spending equation, using the only popular means of getting quick spending created as a rationale, taking up the slack created by a tight-pursed consumer and business side of the equation) would stimulate the economy. The second is from 2011 reporting that Krugman was trying to debunk the claim that war is good for economies.
Where's the controversy, or is it just fun to Krugman-bash regardless of reality?
Krugman is an advocate of the U.S. Tax code. The U.S. tax code is -- and always was -- architected around war rationing. He defends the right of central planners to eternally prepare for war, but then says war is bad. If you still want to give him the benefit of the doubt. You have to ask what makes the U.S.A. so special, so able to be the principal actor in nearly every armed conflict on the globe since WWII? Then you have to ask why ...
Hey, Krugman could be right and he should still be bashed. Reality is that he's a smug jackass.
Ditto, and, even though tourism is up in Missouri, I think the broken window fallacy can finally be put to rest.
Smugness usually hiding debilitating insecurity as it does, I believe Paul suffers from severe delusions of adequacy.
In fact, he is quite inadequate. His books suck.
Ah, the old "facts are irrelevant and since I don't like you misrepresenting or ignoring your actual statements to prove my incorrect perception of you is OK" defense.
Way to reach for the stars. Even if you don't like him -you know, 'smug' and all- ever hear of giving the devil his due?