Our Guns and Butter Economy

May 11, 2012

midnight

With the economy still struggling and the debates over how to fix the problem more intense than ever, one word still evokes bipartisan consensus: exports. "I want us to sell stuff," said President Obama, summing up the bipartisan sentiment. That nebulous word "stuff" is significant. It asks us to see all exports as the same and to refrain from making nuanced value judgments about what exactly we're shipping overseas. In this cold-blooded view, a job-creating export is a job-creating export, and that's as far as any conversation should go. At first glance, such reductionism seems logical, rational, even boringly uncontroversial. But two recent news items highlight how in a globalized economy, there are troubling consequences that come from the particular kind of export economy we're building. The first bit of news came from the Washington Post, which this week reported that "the Obama administration is crafting a proposal that could make it easier to export firearms and other weapons." Though the Homeland Security and Justice Departments say the new rules could make it easier for terrorist and drug cartels to further arm themselves, the White House is nonetheless citing the "stuff" theory of exports to ignore the objections. This is part of a larger pattern since President Obama took office. During Obama's first year in the White House, he began to gut the Pentagon's approval process for arms exports, weakening controls on what could and could not be sold. Later, diplomatic cables uncovered by Wikileaks showed, as Fortune magazine put it, "American officials act[ing] as de facto pitchmen for U.S.-made weapons." The result is that America has become the true "Lord of War," as the arms dealer motto goes. We are the leading arms supplier to the developing world and we are responsible for the majority of all weapons sales across the globe. Yes, we are so committed to selling instruments of death to the rest of the planet that military industries have almost tripled their share of the U.S. economy in just a decade. The second bit of news came from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, whose new study shows that America is exporting our obesity crisis to Mexico. Coupling health statistics with U.S. export data since the North American Free Trade Agreement tore down Mexico's agriculture trade barriers, researchers found that the Mexican market was flooded by American agribusinesses' taxpayer-subsidized commodities (corn, soybeans) and their processed derivatives. According to the report, that quickly wiped out Mexico's local food economy, leaving its food system exactly "like the industrialized food system of the United States—characterized by the overabundance of obesogenic foods." Not surprisingly, Mexican obesity rates have consequently skyrocketed. Taken together, these export booms represent what could be called America's new Guns and Butter economy. We are so desperate to export any "stuff" we can, we are now fattening up the world and arming it for permanent bloodshed. Seeking to short circuit any objections to this trend, President Obama has said simply that "we're at a moment where necessity has tempered the old debates" over exports and economic policy. In terms of history, he's not wrong—during the previous century, America witnessed fevered fights over what constitutes a moral farm policy, and in the 1930s the U.S. Senate's Nye Committee held almost 100 hearings into "greedy munitions interests that were unduly influencing public policy. Sadly, Obama is correct—those debates have been silenced. But should they be? Should we simply say that any exports—no matter their moral, ethical, environmental or health implications—are inherently good? Does "necessity" really mean that "stuff" for stuff's sake must be the basis of our export economy? Washington and profit-at-all-cost industries certainly say yes—but that doesn't mean it's the right answer. David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at <a href="http://www.davidsirota.com">www.davidsirota.com</a>. © 2012 Creators.com

Keep the Shepherd Free

Support Milwaukee's locally owned free weekly magazine.

LEARN MORE

Comments (2)

Comment Feed

The secret to economic success is not just "too se...

The secret to economic success is not just "too sell stuff", it is "to sell stuff to those who bring outside money"... which means exports. Oil-rich states export their products to the rest of the country, can eliminate the need for a state income tax. Wisconsin and California exports its dairy products to the rest of the US, our suburbs export their skilled managerial services and trained blue-collar skills to Milwaukee (it's called commuting to work).

If that means we must sell stuff that we have a monopoly on, that which is not already outsourced, that means American weapons!... but how did food get in there?

Funny how we complain about the Chinese dumping products in the US at reduced, loss-leader prices, that means the Chinese government must be subsidizing those products... And what are we doing? Our own government is subsidizing obesity food items like corn, soybeans, and milk, not healthy items like vegetables and fruit. No wonder we are overloaded by high fructose corn syrup. We can over-produce that stuff because we have highly automated equipment, no need for less-than-minimum-wage immigrant crop pickers like when dealing with fresh produce in Cesar Chavez unionizing days.

It is my contention that our farming industry developed all that labor-avoiding equipment because of those subsidies, the subsidy made it profitable to venture into using machinery because we could grow it on 48 states soil, just needed to remove the labor content that was kept higher than the foreign competition by US minimum wage laws. -- What it also created is the non-free-trade items that could "use" near slave labor in other countries, no real drive to automate what was grown elsewhere.

We need to shift what we subsidize to healthier alternatives, it will allow us to "automate" picking of fresh produce, further eliminating the need for immigrants coming across our borders. It will make it profitable to grow and distribute healthy food for our own people, make them healthier, and reduce the healthcare costs. Whether Businesses are the only supplier of health insurance or it is Public health insurance, that's a good idea.

Imagine if government did what it was supposed to do, not create jobs, but to create the tax and subsidy environment that encourages private business to create jobs and products that are good for our people (not just good for the business owners). Solar power, Wind power, Healthy foods and side-effect free medicines and vaccines that can be cheaply distributed worldwide (without losing money).

On agricultural subsidies alone, take advantage of the global warming that will make the tropics too harsh to grow food, and grow those tropical foods here as we warm up. Subsidize the real cane sugar and molasses, automate those so we don't need so much US labor, nor foreign dark-skinned or yellow-skinned cane-cutters. Give us good-tasting healthy food so we don't need to add ammonia disinfectants and "artificial flavorings" to our rotted and blighted crops, pink slime and mechanically separated meats. The waste of agriculture needs to be put back in the ground as nutrients, not used to bulk up what we leave for our people to eat. What are we, "human waste disposals"?

It was said about 20 years ago that we only need 17% of our people to make all the items that the entire country needs. It was said recently that only 2% of our people can produce all the food that the US people need. Couldn't this also mean that 80% of our people do not even need to work anymore to get our basic needs met? Or should it really mean that all of us can share that burden by working 5-10 hour weeks? Too much idle time on our hands? Wouldn't that mean more time to learn or pursue creative arts, time to get to know and appreciate our diverse neighbors?

Anonymous more than 14 years ago

In a capitalist society the economy is always good...

In a capitalist society the economy is always good all the time for good people who choose to work harder and smarter than the competition. The lazy and the outsmarted will always struggle and they will blame others like the rich and the politicians. Or just blame the "economy."

Anonymous more than 14 years ago