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Tag(s): Credit; Dollar; Economic; Economic Refugees; Economics; Economy Recession; Economy-Economics- US; Economy-Economics- World; Inflation; Invasion; (more...) Investing; Military; Money; Money; Money; People (less...)
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September 17, 2008 at 17:05:04

ECON 101, (OR, IT'S THE WAR, STUPID)

by Terry Hughes Page 1 of 1 page(s)

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HUGHES VIEWS
By Terry Hughes

ECON 101, (OR, IT'S THE WAR, STUPID)
When I was a freshman in college at the University of California, Santa Barbara I accidentally signed up for Economics 101, a class closed to freshmen. After the first day of class I realized I was hopelessly outgunned, but foolishly decided to stay the course, and competed against upper classmen who did not spend every afternoon drinking beer on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I don't remember much about the class, except for my poor grade, but one subject stood out at the time, and remains with me today: guns and butter.
It seems that nations have a finite amount of money to spend, (unless they borrow, of course), and must choose how to budget their resources on the military, (guns), or on the domestic economy, (butter). If a country is at war, it must spend the majority of its funds on the military, and sacrifice the domestic spending agenda. If the war overwhelms the budget, sacrifices must be asked of the populace in the butter department. Butter is rationed, as is gasoline, metals, meats and civilian business activity.
When George Walker Bush decided to launch the Bush War, he ignored this simple premise, which surely must have been discussed while he attended Harvard to earn his MBA. If you launch a war, you had better cut down on the butter. He and Dick Cheney went one better, however, and decided to attack OPEC well before September 11, 2001. Dick Cheney met in the White House with the American Oil Cartel, and revealed that Bush and Cheney would break OPEC by invading Iraq and control the source of the second largest deposits of oil in the world. When 9-11 came along, it seemed like the perfect rationale for invading the 'terrorist' state of Iraq. After the invasion and failed occupation, OPEC got wind of the strategy, and lifted the lid on the price of oil. The result today is oil costing about a hundred dollars a barrel.
The greatest concern of Americans today is our bungled economy, but few people connect the botched Bush War with our failed economy. This war was paid for on credit because George Walker Bush did not want the Americans to sacrifice their butter, and the Chinese were more than willing to front the cost. Today we are paying the cost of this short-sighted strategy.
And now we are facing a credit catastrophe, a mortgage calamity and an inflation of prices for goods and services. The Iraq situation continues to stumble into a civil war which will only invite Iran into the fracas. It is time to stop wasting blood and treasure in a country, much like Viet Nam, who does not want us occupying their culture, and thinks of us as their enemy.
It is time to declare "Mission Accomplished" and come home from the endless Bush War. If the federal government ceases spending money on building bombs and shifts its funds to our national infrastructure, our economy will recover much in the same way as it did under FDR in the response to the earlier Republican disaster of the great Depression.
Build a bomb and blow it up, and you invest a dollar which does not return investment. Build a home and your dollar is re-circulated in the economy seven times over thirty years with mortgage payments, maintenance and remodels. It is time to bring our dollars home, and to stop investing in a vanity war, the Bush War. It is our choice: Guns or Butter.
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1 comments

A retired Navyman who has ran for 1st. District of Tennessee as a Green with a primary plank of Impeaching Bush/Chaney and a secondary plank of listening to and serving people instead of corporations. He now has accepted the position of FOAVC Coordinater for TN. He also is a direct decendent both on his Mothers and Fathers failies of members of the Seneca Nation.
Robert N SmithA retired Navyman who has ran for 1st. District of Tennessee as a Green with a primary plank of Impeaching Bush/Chaney and a secondary plank of listening to and serving people instead of corporations. He now has accepted the position of FOAVC Coordinater for TN. He also is a direct decendent both on his Mothers and Fathers failies of members of the Seneca Nation.

Guns or Butter

We have chosen Guns over Butter as policy since 1948. First as a so called cold war, then a war on drugs and now a war on terror. The cold war ended unless our politicians insist on restarting it. I was part of that war and after a while came to see how much false info was being given to the public. Then President Nixon started a war on drugs. When it started drugs were only a problem in a few places. Today you can't buy hot fresh bread anywhere but I will bet every one of the readers knows where you can buy drugs in your hometown. Now they want to expand the war on terror to anyone who has the brains to question their falsehoods. Time to end all these wars and start being logical. We can't afford war any more, in any shape or size. Except the war on stupid political sacred cows.

by Robert N Smith (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 8 diaries, 117 comments) on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 11:14:44 PM