Facebook Twitter
  • Home
  • Perspectives
  • Articles
  • Columns
  • Platform
  • Poetry
  • Literature
  • Write for us
Search
Facebook Twitter
63.2 F
Los Angeles
Friday, May 23, 2025
Sign in
Welcome! Log into your account
Forgot your password? Get help
Privacy Policy
Password recovery
Recover your password
A password will be e-mailed to you.
Media Monitors Network (MMN)
Advertise with MMN
  • Home
  • Perspectives
    • Jerusalem Israel Palestine Dome of The Rock Golden Dome

      The Abraham Accords undermined much-needed peace with Palestinians

      World Map

      Global disturbing disparities

      Globe Algeria Niger Mali Africa

      There is always a price to pay for befriending the Zionists

      Illegal Israeli Settlements

      Antisemitism claims mask a reign of political and cultural terror across…

      The Flower - Pakistan Monument at Night

      Israel in the vanguard of India’s mounting conflict with Pakistan

  • Articles
    • Man studying religious book

      Ishmael and Isaac: An Essay on the Divergent Moral Economies of…

      Mahmoud Abbas

      May Your Home Be Destroyed

      Netanyahu Lighting Hanukah Candles with His Wife and Sons

      Bibi’s Son or: Three Men in a Car

      The Map of Greater Israel

      The Man Who Jumped

      West Bank - Palestine

      Cry, Beloved Country

  • Columns
    • Progressives Must Fight With -- and In -- the Democratic Party

      Steps Left for Electing Progressives and Defeating Republicans in the Midterms

      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      Nancy Pelosi Could Get Us All Killed

      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      ‘Fortress Mentality’ Among U.S. Leaders Has Trapped Us in a Cycle…

      Progressives Must Fight With -- and In -- the Democratic Party

      Grassroots Organizing Should Dump Biden and Clear the Path for a…

      Corporate Media Are Focusing on Race -- and Dodging Class

      Biden Refuses to Mention the Worsening Dangers of Nuclear War. Media…

  • Platform
    • Hanukkah Lights

      Hanukkah is not hypocrisy

      The Washington Post

      “Preemptive war could risk millions of casualties. But….”

      When they shout: "We strongly condemn…"

      68

      Why Iran won’t attack Israel

      Is One Iraqi’s Self-Hatred Newsworthy?

  • Poetry
  • Literature
  • Write for us
Home Perspectives I just found 29 Million jobs
  • Perspectives

I just found 29 Million jobs

By
David Swanson
-
September 4, 2011
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
WhatsApp
Linkedin
ReddIt
Email
Print
Tumblr
Telegram
Mix
VK
Digg
LINE
Viber
Naver
    29

    No, not 29 million job offers. I’m no better at applying for jobs than you are, and my town offers nothing but dead-end McJobs or positions in the military industrial complex, just like yours. I mean I just spotted an easy way to create 29 million jobs, one for every unemployed or underemployed U.S. worker.

    No, I’m not about to say "Just raise taxes on gazillionaires and hire people to build stuff." I’m all in favor of that, for lots of reasons, including the political corruption created by a concentration of wealth. We might have to disempower gazillionaires before we can enact any sensible policies, including the one I’m about to propose, but it can itself be done without raising a dime in revenue. This means that the President, who has broad, albeit unconstitutional, powers to move funding around from one program to another could do this himself. Or Congress could.

    Whichever branch of government found the decency first could create 29 million well-paid and rewarding jobs improving the world. And this could be done through policies long favored by a majority of Americans.

    How, you ask?

    Well, I noticed that we didn’t create any more jobs in August, but did see a record number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan. Then I saw all the reports on the $60 billion "wasted" by the Pentagon in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This started me thinking.

    Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe looked at that $60 billion and asked what else could have been done with it. Drawing on a 2009 study by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), they concluded that instead, we might have created 193,000 jobs. That is to say, given all the military and contractor jobs that in fact were created for the U.S. workforce by that $60 billion, we could have created 193,000 MORE jobs. This is, in fact, the tradeoff found in the 2009 study between military spending (not even "wasted" military spending) and tax cuts for working people.

    There are some other calculations in the same study, however. If we had spent that $60 billion on clean energy, we would have created (directly or indirectly) 330,000 more jobs. If we’d spent it on healthcare, we’d have created 480,000 more jobs. And if we’d spent it on education, we’d have created 1.05 million more jobs.

    But isn’t it strange to make this calculation using the $60 billion that was supposedly wasted rather than with the $1.2 trillion that has been spent in total on two wars that a majority says should be ended and should never have begun? If we look at the $1.2 trillion that has been worse than wasted on killing large numbers of people and making us less safe, we find that we could have instead created anything in the range between 3.9 million to 21 million more jobs, depending on whether we moved the war spending to tax cuts or education or something in between. Ideally, of course, we’d have put some into education, some into clean energy, etc., resulting in a figure somewhere between those two.

    But this is all looking at the past. What about going forward? Well, I also noticed Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey’s calculation that $1.8 trillion could be saved over 10 years by ending the wars now. That’s a figure taking a broader view of war spending, to include veterans’ care, and that fact almost certainly alters the calculations. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the same tradeoffs still held, by choosing to save that $1.8 trillion, we could add between 5.8 million and 31.5 million jobs over the next 10 years.

    Or, sticking with the "wasted" military spending angle, we could start with the $2.3 trillion the Pentagon is unable to account for. That kind of tradeoff would give us 7.4 million to 40.3 million jobs depending on how we chose to invest the money. Of course, the $2.3 trillion is in the past, but given the dramatic trend toward more no-bid contracts (now 45% of military contracting) it seems a safe bet that corruption will hold steady or increase in the years to come.

    But let’s forget about "lost" trillions and look at typical military spending, which is what the study we’re basing this on looked at. Of the $1.2 trillion spent each year now on the military, about $700 billion goes through the Department of Defense, which is what the study we’re using looked at. (Another $75 billion, for example, is spent on protecting cows and lakes while enriching campaign funders through the Department of Homeland Security.) We’re spending about half of discretionary spending on the military, and several times as much as the next highest spending nation in the world.

    Let’s say we want to create 29 million jobs in 10 years. That’s 2.9 million each year. Here’s one way to do it. Take $100 billion from the Department of Defense and move it into education. That creates 1.75 million jobs per year. Take another $50 billion and move it into healthcare spending. There’s an additional 400,000 jobs. Take another $100 billion and move it into clean energy. There’s another 550,000 jobs. And take another $62 billion and turn it into tax cuts, generating an additional 200,000 jobs. Now the military spending in the Department of Energy, the State Department, Homeland Security, and so forth have not been touched. And the Department of Defense has been cut back to about $388 billion, which is to say: more than it was getting 10 years ago when our country went collectively insane.

    Of course I’m writing about numbers here and the numbers represent actual people with particular needs and abilities.  A major effort would be needed to convert military factories and workers to green energy and other industries.  Net job gains reflect a lot of job losses and redirected careers.  But that conversion is part of this process and will involve job creation itself.  If additional funding is needed, then, you know what, the hell with it, go ahead and tax a few multi-billionaires.  It won’t hurt them.

    • TAGS
    • about
    • account
    • Afghanistan
    • ahead
    • almost
    • americans
    • another
    • anything
    • argument
    • around
    • asked
    • before
    • begun
    • better
    • between
    • billion
    • broader
    • build
    • calculations
    • campaign
    • certainly
    • choosing
    • clean
    • complex
    • Congress
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Pinterest
    WhatsApp
    Linkedin
    ReddIt
    Email
    Print
    Tumblr
    Telegram
    Mix
    VK
    Digg
    LINE
    Viber
    Naver
      Previous articleSeptember can still produce something useful
      Next articleUN Panel of Inquiry shows Israel is an ‘Untouchable’ Rogue State
      David Swanson
      David Swanson
      http://www.davidswanson.org
      David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He contributed this article to Media Monitors Network (MMN).
      Facebook Twitter

      RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

      Jerusalem Israel Palestine Dome of The Rock Golden Dome

      The Abraham Accords undermined much-needed peace with Palestinians

      World Map

      Global disturbing disparities

      Globe Algeria Niger Mali Africa

      There is always a price to pay for befriending the Zionists

      Google Search

      MMN @ Google Play Store MMN @ Amazon Appstore

      MMN @ TwitterMMN @ FacebookMMN Feed

      EDITOR PICKS

      Progressives Must Fight With -- and In -- the Democratic Party

      Steps Left for Electing Progressives and Defeating Republicans in the Midterms

      August 31, 2022
      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      Nancy Pelosi Could Get Us All Killed

      August 1, 2022
      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      ‘Fortress Mentality’ Among U.S. Leaders Has Trapped Us in a Cycle...

      July 25, 2022

      POPULAR POSTS

      167

      The Origin of Freemasonry: The Crusaders & Templars

      April 23, 2003
      Top 6 thủ môn Real nổi tiếng được nhiều người yêu thích

      Top 6 thủ môn Real nổi tiếng được nhiều người yêu...

      May 27, 2023

      Sharon to Peres: We Control America

      November 20, 2001

      POPULAR CATEGORY

      • Perspectives13563
      • News7487
      • World6080
      • Asia4330
      • Africa1631
      • Columns1370
      • Health1054
      • Australasia1009
      • Articles786
      ABOUT US
      Media Monitors Network (MMN) is a non-profit, non-partial and non-political platform for those serious Media Contributors and Observers who crave to know and like to help to prevail the whole truth about current affairs, any disputed issue or any controversial issue by their voluntary contributions with logic, reason and rationality.
      Contact us: [email protected]
      FOLLOW US
      Facebook Twitter
      • About MMN
      • Disclaimer
      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms and Conditions
      • Contact
      Copyright © 2000 - MMN International Inc. All rights reserved.
      Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
      All other brands, logos, and product names are registered
      trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
      ResponsiveVoice-NonCommercial licensed under 95x15
      MORE STORIES
      Health system at breaking point as hostilities further intensify in Gaza, WHO warns

      Health system at breaking point as hostilities further intensify in Gaza,...

      May 22, 2025
      Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly – Daily update: 22 May 2025

      Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly – Daily update: 22 May 2025

      May 22, 2025