Great News as US Economy Picks Up

Richard Mellor

Afscme local 444, retired

Well, some people are very happy. It seems the US economy has been picking up steam expanding at a 2.9% rate in the last six months.  The driver of this car is government spending it seems. Infrastructure, You ask?  New hospitals, schools, recreation and cultural centers in our communities, perhaps? The abolition of the $1.trillion student debt? Rebuilding hurricane devastated Puerto Rico? Surely not.

Unfortunately not. Defense spending which contracted at a 2.1% annul rate between 2009 and March 2017 has risen at a 2.9% rate since.

The US Predator in Chief lifted defense spending caps that were introduced to try and alleviate the deficit and things have been humming along since. In the fiscal year ending September 30^th defense spending grew 6%. US taxpayers should be very grateful that we live in a free country with two political parties that look after our interests as both parties, agreed to a budget that boosted  government spending some $300 billion over the next two years including a nice $165 billion more for the military. In the US we call this Bi-partisanship---working together for the good of all.

So there has been this “surge” in defense spending in the spring and summer of this year as we as Americans with our two Wall Street based political parties at the head, take humane steps to protect us (and the free world) from communism, existentialists, revisionists, Grenadans, swarming hordes of Central American wasters with a few Arabs mixed in, gays, transsexuals, mentally ill people who want government hand outs, Canadian socialism, female impersonators, short foreigners masquerading as children, and so much more. Why oh why do so many global forces want to invade us and destroy our way of life? It’s jealousy;  it has to be.

There’s more good news ahead: “I would expect that, with the increase in the defense discretionary caps, that its contribution (defense) is going to increase and in fact it will be leading overall GDP growth by mid-2019” says one CFO at a money managing outfit.

The US economy has moved forward on the basis of a war economy yet we are never at war. I know what the refrain "War, what is it good for?" means now. It's good for profits.