President Obama: I'm All About Jobs. Keeping People Working. Making Sure We Don't Lose Any More Jobs. That's Why I Vigorously Support Cutting Defense.

Do soldiers not work for a living? I think they do.

But all I ever hear about are the, uh, "Soldiers of the Classroom," I guess we're supposed to call them, because public employees like teachers are just like heroes risking their lives to safeguard our country.

In any event, Mr. Obama says he cannot cut a single dime more of discretionary spending, because of the disastrous effect this will have on employment (by which he means, employment among members of his electoral coalition); and yet, billions can be cut from Defense without this worry.

And how many job-losses would be directly attributable to the massive cuts in Defense? Quite a few.

o let’s do the math. The number of jobs created by defense spending varies depending on the nature of the activity and how much each job pays, but it’s a safe bet that at least one direct job is created for every $200,000 in spending. Thus, the $100 billion in annual military spending cuts that might be spawned by deficit-control legislation potentially accounts for 500,000 direct jobs. But that’s just the beginning, because numerous additional jobs are created in retail, construction, education and other pursuits as defense workers spend their income. Analysts argue endlessly about what this economic multiplier effect might be, however a very conservative guess would be that each direct job leads to the creation of at least one indirect job (the real number is probably over twice that). So even a restrained analysis suggests that $100 billion in defense cuts will wipe out a million jobs.

The figure I was tipped was "300,000-400,000," according to an insider.

But let's make sure no teachers lose their jobs, and by "lose their jobs," I mean "are required to either forgo scheduled pay raises or face the prospect of layoffs, and we know unions will choose the latter, because, hell, once you lose your job you're not in the union anymore so who cares."

The same criticism could have been, and was, leveled at his previous "stimulus." His operating theory was that if we just sprayed money around, it would eat up the slack in demand in the economy, so it really didn't matter where we spent it, so long as we spent it.

Okay, instead of spending money on dog-parks and bike-paths, how about not cutting the F-22 purchase order? That's spending money, isn't it? That's employing workers.

And, at the end of the day, we get some F-22's. Sweet deal, huh?

He didn't seem to think so.

And once again, as he tells us he will not permit a single government worker to lose his job in a bad economy (while millions of privately-employed citizens have been unemployed for three years), he undertakes... to shed over 300,000 and as many as 500,000 defense jobs.

Seems to be some disparate treatment going on here. I wonder what could account for that.

Thanks to Dave @ Garfield Ridge.

posted by Ace at 07:05 PM

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