[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] How Iraq War Sucked Billions Out Of Rhode Island Economy

[Bill Totten]

by Sherwood Ross

Countercurrents.org (November 14 2008)


Apart from the tragic human cost, Americans are wising up to the fact
it's not just Iraq that's suffering economically from this war.

Sixty-seven percent of respondents to a New York Times/CBS News poll
April 2 said the Iraq war had contributed "a lot" to our economic
problems and 22 percent more said it contributed "some", while only ten
percent said "not much" or "not at all".

President Bush's war is, in fact, driving up the price of oil and the
cost of oil-dependent activities as trucking and agriculture, hitting
Americans at the checkout counter as well as the gas pump, sucking jobs
out of the economy, depressing wages and emptying family bank accounts.

Rhode Island taxpayers, for example, will be parted from $622 million
this year to finance the war, according to the National Priorities
Project of Northampton, Massachusetts, which tracks the impact of
federal spending on states and localities. The total bill just to Rhode
Island since Bush invaded Iraq is $2.1 billion.

Spent in Rhode Island, that same money instead might have bought health
care for 713,083 people for a year or paid for a year's worth of
scholarships for 270,844 students or hired 30,286 elementary school
teachers or provided 3.5 million homes with a year's worth of renewable
electricity, the Priorities Project said.

As for the full $572 billion Bush spent on the military last year -
that's 44 cents out of every tax dollar - it breaks down to $1,800 for
every resident of America, writes economist Robert Pollin of the
University of Massachusetts in the March 31 issue of The Nation.

President-elect Obama is familiar with these costs. He earlier put the
cost of the war to each American household at about $1,200 a year.
Whichever figure you use, we're talking big bucks.

Economist Pollin asserts that money spent at home on education, health
care, energy conservation and infrastructure "creates between fifty and
100 percent more jobs than the same money going to Iraq". So the $138
billion funneled just into Iraq last year cost American workers one
million jobs, he says.

And, for comparison purposes, that $138 billion could have instead
provided Medicaid-level health insurance for all 45 million uninsured
Americans, Pollin said, as well as built 400 schools and hired 30,000
more K-12 teachers. What's more, "channeling hundreds of billions of
dollars into areas such as renewable energy and mass transportation
would create a hothouse environment supporting new technologies", he
asserted.

As for the lost one million jobs, there's more tragedy here than meets
the eye. Putting a million people to work would have reduced
unemployment to close to four percent. When it gets down that low,
Pollin says, good help becomes harder to find so employers raise wages
and improve working conditions, meaning American workers would be better
off generally. In recent years, US workers made heady productivity gains
for employers, yet few of the fruits fell into their pay envelopes.

America, especially after World War One, had a fierce "isolationist"
streak. There were millions of rock-ribbed Republicans, particularly in
the Midwest, who didn't want any part of Europe's wars. Now President
Bush can easily induce interventionist congressional Republicans and
Democrats alike to spend for an endless war that is benefiting defense
contractors and oil producers and few others.

Imagine if the benefits to Rhode Island of the $2 billion taken from
this state (under false pretenses, I might point out) and squandered in
Iraq were put back into the hands of the people of Rhode Island and
devoted instead to modernizing factories and implementing new
technologies, to lifting the skill levels of the work force to make it
more entrepreneurial and competitive! Imagine the benefits to America!

_____

Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based columnist and public relations consultant
who covers military and political topics. He worked formerly for the
Chicago Daily News and wire services. Reach him at sherwoodr1 at yahoo.com
This essay first appeared in The Providence Journal.

http://www.countercurrents.org/ross141108.htm


TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click
on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this
essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/