Such heat poses increasing health hazards for many groups: the old, the very young, those of us who don’t have access to air conditioning. One group, however, is at particular risk: people whose jobs require lengthy exposure to heat. Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that about 40 workers died of heat exposure between 2011 and 2021, although, as CNN reports, that’s probably a significant undercount. In February 2024, responding to this growing threat, a coalition of 10 state attorneys general petitioned the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to implement “a nationwide extreme heat emergency standard” to protect workers from the kinds of dangers that last year killed, among others, construction workers, farm workers, factory workers, and at least one employee who was laboring in an unairconditioned area of a warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee.

Facing the threat of overweening government interference from OSHA or state regulators, two brave Republican-run state governments have stepped in to protect employers from just such dangerous oversight. Florida and Texas have both passed laws prohibiting localities from mandating protections like rest breaks for, or even having to provide drinking water to, workers in extreme heat situations. Seriously, Florida and Texas have made it illegal for local cities to protect their workers from the direct effects of climate change. Apparently, being “woke” includes an absurd desire not to see workers die of heat exhaustion.

And those state laws are very much in keeping with the plans that the national right-wing has for workers, should the wholly-owned Trump subsidiary that is today’s Republican Party take control of the federal government this November.

We’ve Got a Plan for That!

It’s not exactly news that conservatives, who present themselves as the friends of working people, often support policies that threaten not only workers’ livelihoods, but their very lives. This fall, as we face the most consequential elections of my lifetime (all 71 years of it), rights that working people once upon a time fought and died for — the eight-hour day, a legal minimum wage, protections against child labor — are, in effect, back on the ballot. The people preparing for a second Trump presidency aren’t hiding their intentions either. Anyone can discover them, for instance, in the Heritage Foundation’s well-publicized Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership, a “presidential transition” plan that any future Trump administration is expected to put into operation.

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As I’ve written before, the New York Times’s Carlos Lozada did us a favor by working his way through all 887 pages of that tome of future planning. Lacking his stamina, I opted for a deep dive into a single chapter of it focused on the “Department of Labor and Related Agencies.” Its modest 35 pages offer a plan to thoroughly dismantle more than a century of workers’ achievements in the struggle for both dignity and simple on-the-job survival.

First Up: Stop Discriminating Against Discriminators

I’m sure you won’t be shocked to learn that the opening salvo of that chapter is an attack on federal measures to reduce employment discrimination based on race or sex. Its author, Jonathan Berry of the Federalist Society, served in Donald Trump’s Department of Labor (DOL). He begins his list of “needed reforms” with a call to “Reverse the DEI Revolution in Labor Policy.” “Under the Obama and Biden Administrations,” Berry explains, “labor policy was yet another target of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) revolution” under which “every aspect of labor policy became a vehicle with which to advance race, sex, and other classifications and discriminate against conservative and religious viewpoints on these subjects and others, including pro-life views.”

You may wonder what it means to advance “classifications” or why that’s even a problem. Berry addresses this question in his second “necessary” reform, a call to “Eliminate Racial Classifications and Critical Race Theory Trainings.” Those two targets for elimination would seem to carry very different weight. After all, “Critical Race Theory,” or CRT, is right-wing code for the view that structural barriers exist preventing African Americans and other people of color from enjoying the full rights of citizens or residents. It’s unclear that such “trainings” even occur at the Labor Department, under CRT or any other label, so their “elimination” would, in fact, have little impact on workers.

On the other hand, the elimination of “racial classifications” would be consequential for many working people, as Berry makes clear. “The Biden Administration,” he complains, “has pushed ‘racial equity’ in every area of our national life, including in employment, and has condoned the use of racial classifications and racial preferences under the guise of DEI and critical race theory, which categorizes individuals as oppressors and victims based on race.” Pushing racial equity in employment? The horror!

Berry’s characterization of CRT is, in fact, the opposite of what critical race theory seeks to achieve. This theoretical approach to the problem of racism does not categorize individuals at all, but instead describes structures — like corporate hiring practices based on friendship networks — that can disadvantage groups of people of a particular race. In fact, CRT describes self-sustaining systems that do not need individual oppressors to continue (mal)functioning.

The solution to the problem of discrimination in employment in Project 2025’s view is to deny the existence of race (or sex, or sexual orientation) as a factor in the lives of people in this country. It’s simple enough: if there’s no race, then there’s no racial discrimination. Problem solved.

And to ensure that it remains solved, Project 2025 would prohibit the Equal Economic Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, from collecting employment data based on race. The mere existence of such “data can then be used to support a charge of discrimination under a disparate impact theory. This could lead to racial quotas to remedy alleged race discrimination.” In other words, if you can’t demonstrate racial discrimination in employment (because you’re enjoined from collecting data on the subject), then there’s no racial discrimination to remedy. Case closed, right?

By outlawing such data collection, a Republican administration guided by Project 2025 would make it almost impossible to demonstrate the existence of racial disparity in the hiring, retention, promotion, or termination of employees.

Right-wingers in my state of California tried something similar in 2003 with Ballot Proposition 54, known as the Racial Privacy Initiative. In addition to employment data, Prop. 54 would have outlawed collecting racial data about public education and, no less crucially, about policing. As a result, Prop. 54 would have made it almost impossible for civil rights organizations to address the danger of “driving while Black” — the disproportionate likelihood that Black people will be the subject of traffic stops with the attendant risk of police violence or even death. Voters soundly defeated Prop. 54 by a vote of 64% to 36% and, yes, racial discrimination still exists in California, but at least we have access to the data to prove it.

There is, however, one group of people Project 2025 would emphatically protect from discrimination: employers who, because of their “conservative and religious viewpoints… including pro-life views,” want the right to discriminate against women and LGBTQ people. “The President,” writes Berry, “should make clear via executive order that religious employers are free to run their businesses according to their religious beliefs, general nondiscrimination laws notwithstanding.” Of course, Congress already made it clear that, under Title VII of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, “religious” employers are free to ignore anti-discrimination laws when it suits them.

But Wait, There’s More

Not content with gutting anti-discrimination protections, Project 2025 would also seek to rescind rights secured under the Fair Labor Standards Act, or FLSA, which workers have enjoyed for many decades. Originally passed in 1938, the FLSA “establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor standards affecting full-time and part-time workers in the private sector and in Federal, State, and local governments,” according to the Department of Labor.

Perhaps because the federal minimum hourly wage has remained stuck at $7.25 for a decade and a half, Project 2025 doesn’t launch the typical conservative attack on the very concept of such a wage. It does, however, go after overtime pay (generally time-and-a-half for more than 40 hours of work a week), by proposing that employers be allowed to average time worked over a longer period. This would supposedly be a boon for workers, granting them the “flexibility” to labor fewer than 40 hours one week and more than 40 the next, without an employer having to pay overtime compensation for that second week. What such a change would actually do, of course, is give an employer the power to require overtime work during a crunch period while reducing hours at other times, thereby avoiding paying overtime often or at all.

Another supposedly family-friendly proposal would allow workers to choose to take their overtime compensation as paid time off, rather than in dollars and cents. Certainly, any change that would reduce workloads sounds enticing. But as the Pew Research Center reports, more than 40% of workers can’t afford to, and don’t, take all their paid time off now, so this measure could function as yet one more way to reduce the overtime costs of employers.

In contrast to the Heritage Foundation’s scheme, Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a genuinely family-friendly workload reduction plan: a gradual diminution of the standard work week from 40 to 32 hours at the same pay. Such proposals have been around (and ridiculed) for decades, but this one is finally receiving serious consideration in places like the New York Times.

In deference to the supposedly fierce spirit of “worker independence,” Project 2025 would also like to see many more workers classified not as employees at all but as independent contractors. And what would such workers gain from that “independence”? Well, as a start, freedom from those pesky minimum wage and overtime compensation regulations, not to speak of the loss of protections like disability insurance. And they’d be “free” to pay the whole tab (15.3% of their income) for their Social Security and Medicare taxes, unlike genuine employees, whose employers pick up half the cost.

Young people, too, would acquire more “independence” thanks to Project 2025 — at least if what they want to do is work in more dangerous jobs where they are presently banned. As Berry explains:

“Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs. Current rules forbid many young people, even if their family is running the business, from working in such jobs. This results in worker shortages in dangerous fields and often discourages otherwise interested young workers from trying the more dangerous job.”

The operative word here is “adults.” In fact, no laws presently exclude adults from hazardous work based on age. What Berry is talking about is allowing adolescents to perform such labor. Duvan Tomás Pérez, for instance, was a 16-year-old who showed just such an “interest” in an inherently dangerous job: working at a poultry plant in Mississippi, where he died in an industrial accident. The middle schooler, a Guatemalan immigrant who had lived in the United States for six years, was employed illegally by the Mar-Jac Poultry company. If there are “worker shortages in dangerous fields,” it’s because adults don’t want to take the risks. The solution is to make the work less dangerous for everyone, not to hire children to do it.

We’re Gonna Roll the Union Over

Mind you, much to the displeasure of Project 2025 types, this country is experiencing a renaissance of union organizing. Companies that long thought they could avoid unionization, from Amazon to Starbucks, are now the subject of such drives. In my own world of higher education, new unions are popping up and established ones are demonstrating renewed vigor in both private and public universities. As the bumper-sticker puts it, unions are “the folks who brought you the weekend.” They’re the reason we have laws on wages and hours, not to speak of on-the-job protections. So, it should be no surprise that Project 2025 wants to reduce the power of unions in a number of ways, including:

• Amending the National Labor Relations Act to allow “Employee Involvement Organizations” to supplant unions. Such “worker-management councils” are presently forbidden for good reason. They replace real unions that have the power to bargain for wages and working conditions with toothless pseudo-unions.

• Ending the use of “card-checks” and requiring elections to certify union representation. At the moment, the law still permits a union to present signed union-support cards from employees to the National Labor Relations Board and the employer. If both entities agree, the union wins legal recognition. The proposed change would make it significantly harder for unions to get certified, especially because cards can be collected without the employer’s knowledge, whereas a public election with a long lead time gives the employer ample scope for anti-union organizing activities, both legal and otherwise.

• Allowing individual states to opt out of labor protections granted under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act.

The measures covered here are, believe it or not, just the highlights of that labor chapter of Project 2025. If put into practice, they would be an historically unprecedented dream come true for employers, and a genuine nightmare for working people.

Meanwhile, at the Trumpified and right-wing-dominated Supreme Court, there are signs that some justices are interested in entertaining a case brought by Elon Musk’s SpaceX that could abolish the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal entity that adjudicates most labor disputes involving federal law. Without the NLRB, legal protections for workers, especially organizing or organized workers, would lose most of their bite. Despite the court’s claim to pay no attention to public opinion, its justices would certainly take note of a resounding defeat of Donald Trump, the Republicans, and Project 2025 at the polls.

A New “Contract on America?”

The last time the right wing was this organized was probably back in 1994, when Newt Gingrich published his “Contract with America.” Some of us were so appalled by its contents that we referred to it as a plan for a gangster hit, a “Contract on America.”

This year, they’re back with a vengeance. All of which is to say that if you work for a living, or if you know and love people who do, there’s a lot on the line in this year’s election. We can’t sit this one out.

Copyright 2024 Rebecca Gordon

Via Tomdispatch.com

Four years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States has 737 billionaires with a combined wealth of more than $5.5 trillion.

By Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo | –

( Inequality.org ) – Four years ago, the United States entered the Covid-19 pandemic. Forbes published its 34th annual billionaire survey shortly after with data keyed to March 18, 2020. On that day, the United States had 614 billionaires who owned a combined wealth of $2.947 trillion.

Four years later, on March 18, 2024, the country has 737 billionaires with a combined wealth of $5.529 trillion, an 87.6 percent increase of $2.58 trillion, according to Institute for Policy Studies calculations of Forbes Real Time Billionaire Data. (Thank you, Forbes!)

The last four years have been great for particular billionaires:

On March 18, 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk had wealth valued just under $25 billion. By May 2022, his wealth had surged to $255 billion.  As of March 18, 2024, Musk is at $188.5 billion, more than a seven-fold increase in four years.

Over four years, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has seen his wealth increase from $113 billion to 192.8 billion, even after paying out tens of billions in a divorce settlement and donating tens of billions to charity.

Three Walton family members — Jim, Alice, and Rob — are the principal heirs to the Walmart fortune.  They saw their combined assets rise from $161.1 billion to $229.6 billion.

In 2020, only one billionaire — Jeff Bezos — had $100 billion or more. Today, the entire top ten are centi-billionaires, bringing their collective wealth to a staggering $1.4 trillion.

The only billionaire on the 2020 top 15 wealthiest Americans list to see their wealth decline in four years was MacKenzie Scott. Four years ago, on March 18, 2020, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos had a net worth of $36 billion. It has declined to $35.4 billion due to her aggressive giving to charity.

“Rich get Richer,” Digital, Dream/ Dreamland v. 3, 2024.

For more details on how America’s billionaires have fared since the onset of the pandemic, check out our updates page.

Asked to comment on the fact that Palestinians wouldn’t be allowed to return once they were forcibly displaced from Gaza, Kushner responded, “Maybe, but I’m not sure there’s much left of Gaza at this point.” And to further discredit the enclave, Trump’s son-in-law described it as having no historical precedent – “It was the result of a war – you had tribes that went different places and then Gaza became a thing.” He’s wrong, of course; Gaza has a very long history behind it. It’s the Gaza Strip as a territorial entity that is a relatively recent construct.

The simplifications have become obscene. Gaza is the entire symbol and experience of Palestine

It holds Palestinian history and memory within a confined space that is now subjected to what is very obviously genocide according to all legal definitions, while the world debates and questions whether Israel really is, when all is said and done, committing genocide. And if it is, what about 7 October? This obscene normalisation and acceptance of genocide is built upon normalising decades of Israeli colonial violence so, unfortunately, no one should really be surprised. Nevertheless, the shame of it should stain the international community forever.

Kushner’s humanitarian pretences are equally as hypocritical as those of the international community. The international community, a euphemism for Western countries, refuses to take in Palestinian refugees on the grounds that those countries do not want to be complicit in the forced displacement of the indigenous population of Palestine. But the same countries do not appear to mind Palestinians being subjected to an Israeli genocide, which is the ultimate form of ethnic cleansing. How far fetched would it be for Israel and Kushner to have their way, and we see the international community praising settlements and real estate deals as “economics for peace”? Of course, there would be no Palestinians left to make peace with in such a scenario, or the numbers would be so low that peace would fall from the equation, leaving only economic benefits for Israel and its accomplices.

There is not much left in terms of Gaza’s infrastructure, but Kushner is wrong to say there’s not much left of Gaza. If the citizens of a country are its essence, then 2.3 million Palestinians are Gaza. His sweeping statement eliminates even the existence of Gaza — and thus its Palestinian population — which is still a territorial reality, albeit one now imbued with a new bloody history that is Israel’s doing.

Majority Report with Sam Seder Video: “Jared Kushner Sees Israel “Cleaning” Gaza And Developing Its Beachfront Property”

“I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now,” Kushner added for context, while explaining to the interviewer what he’d do if he was in Israel. This was the epitome of how international politics plays out in Palestine, and what Palestinians have suffered as a result.

Someone sitting in Miami Beach, or anywhere else for that matter, has no right to decide the genocidal fate of Palestinians. However, as much as Kushner should be called out for his complicity, so should the UN, the international entity that recognised a colonial enterprise built upon an ethnic cleansing in process which has now morphed into the world’s most complicit genocidal action.

Waterfront real estate in Gaza when Palestinians’ homes have been completely destroyed? This is what happens when the UN only speaks in terms of purportedly isolated violations and not in terms of the ongoing Zionist colonial conquest of Palestine.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor

Chansley has written two books and produced a dozen or so videos about his political ideas; in October, 2023 he filed paperwork to run for Congress in Arizona’s Eighth District. Though he didn’t follow through and mount an actual campaign, had he run and won he likely wouldn’t have been the most extreme member of the House. And Donald Trump, whom Chanley and his fellow Q travelers believed was God’s anointed, is very much a contender for the highest office in the land.   

Chansley’s red-pill moment came, he says, when he discovered the writings of the arch conspiracy theorist Milton William Cooper, who was inspired in his turn by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious forgery that purported to expose an ancient Jewish plot to destroy the Christian nations. As Chansley’s thinking evolved, he went on to embrace eco-fascism, anti-vax activism, Christian nationalism, New Age religiosity, and Libertarianism—a stew that is sometimes called “conspirituality.” I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about the deep roots of paranoid conspiracy theory in American history, but if you want to know what they come down to, his prayer sums it up succinctly. It’s about how “they” are taking what is rightfully “ours.”

Who “they” are has changed over the centuries, but what’s “ours” has always been the privileges that white Christian men believed was their birthright, but for too many, seemed to be slipping away. In colonial times, “they” were agents of the Pope. In the 1790s and the 1820s they were atheistic members of the Illuminati and the Masons. By the mid-19^th century, the enemy was the Irish and other Catholic immigrants who were competing for jobs. The fight over slavery spawned a host of rival conspiracy theories. During the post-Civil War era, which saw the failure of Reconstruction and the rise of vast economic inequalities, the focus shifted to English and Jewish bankers and the demonetization of silver. A few decades later, Jewish anarchists and reds and integrationists were also in the crosshairs. QAnon, the first conspiracy theory to be born on social media, takes bits and pieces from its predecessors, mixes and matches them with medieval blood libels and Gnostic apocalypticism, and gamifies it all by inviting believers to participate in its world-building. Donald Trump, in their telling, is secretly battling the elite cabal of pedophile cannibals who control the Deep State.

Whether they make you laugh or cry, those theories wouldn’t be as viral and sticky as they are if their believers weren’t experiencing real stresses—and if the horrible things they accuse their enemies of doing, everything from cannibalism to pedophilia and mass murder, weren’t behaviors that really do exist. Of course, Jews as a category don’t ritually torture and murder Christian babies, but human babies of all varieties—including Jewish ones—have been horrifically abused. More than 13,000 children have been killed by a largely Jewish army in Gaza in just the last several months.

The Politics of Fear: The Peculiar Persistence of American Paranoia by Arthur Goldwag (Penguin Random House). Click here to buy.

And is it altogether delusional to imagine, as QAnon believers do, that elites get away with child abuse? The Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor might not have had a sex dungeon, as the proponents of the Pizzagate theory claimed, but Jeffrey Epstein certainly kept a harem of underaged women and had a circle of socially and politically connected friends that included billionaires, geniuses, and royalty. Epstein’s story—everything from the mysterious sources of his wealth to his odd connection to Trump’s attorney general (William Barr’s father was the headmaster of the Dalton School when it hired him as a teacher in 1974), and his mysterious suicide in jail in 2019—could have leaped fully formed from the head of an antisemitic conspiracy theorist, like Athena from the head of Zeus, but it was all true.

Trump’s voters’ feelings of dispossession are not that far off the mark either, as a host of not-so-fun facts about economic inequality make clear. A 2017 study found that the richest three Americans (none of them Jewish) controlled more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the nation. The total real wealth held by the richest families in the United States tripled between 1989 and 2019, according to a 2022 Congressional Budget Office report, while average earners’ gains were negligible. The ten richest people in the world, nine of them Americans, doubled their wealth during the pandemic.

Our great national myth—that America is a crucible of equality, tolerance, and boundless economic opportunity—has never been our national reality. Though right-wing populism sees the world through a lens that is distorted by irrational hatreds, it nonetheless lands on a painful truth: that unregulated capitalism is brutal and unfair. Right wing conspiracists displace the blame for its crimes onto outsiders; progressives recognize that for all its very real gestures towards equity, justice, and universal opportunity, our constitutional order was erected on a rickety scaffolding of race supremacism, religious bigotry, involuntary servitude, and land theft and compromised by them from the very beginning.

Trump’s white male voters’ intuition that the system is rigged against them is more-or-less correct, even if the privileges their fathers were born to were undeserved, and their prescriptions to rejigger the fix in their favor could not be more pernicious. The fact that so many economic left-behinds look to Trump as their champion may be perplexing, but no one can doubt that they need one.

Whether Trump wins or loses this fall, the challenge for the center, the left, and even fair-minded members of the moderate right, is to create a reality-based narrative that can compete with Trump’s and Chansley’s—and that has reparation rather than retribution at its core.  

Imagine this: since March 2023, 16 million Americans — yes, that’s right, 16 million — have lost healthcare coverage, including four million children, as states redefine eligibility for Medicaid for the first time in three years. Worse yet, the nation is only halfway through the largest purge ever of Medicaid as the expansion and extension of healthcare to millions, brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, have ended, leaving some families no longer eligible, while others need to reapply through a new process in their state.

This thrusting of tens of millions of Americans out of the national healthcare system at a moment when healthcare outfits, pharmaceutical companies, and health insurance corporations are making record profits has been termed “the great unwinding.” And it couldn’t be more cruelly ironic. After all, states have the power and authority to expand healthcare to all their residents; the federal government could similarly extend the declaration of a public health emergency that would let so many of us keep distinctly life-protecting access to healthcare. Yet millions have instead been pushed violently and rapidly from such life-saving care.

Some states are feeling the impact especially strongly. In Georgia, for instance, more than 149,000 children lost their pandemic Medicaid enrollment in just six months. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Texas is the epicenter of Medicaid’s unwinding. There, more than two million Americans have been removed from the state’s Medicaid program since federal pandemic-era coverage protections were lifted last April. As Axios reported, new state data indicates “that’s the most of any state and nearly equivalent to all of Houston — Texas’ most populous city, with 2.3 million residents — losing coverage in less than a year.” In fact, 61% of enrollees in Texas have lost Medicaid since last April.

Death by Poverty and the Lack of Healthcare

In my home state, policy analysts predict that more than 1.1 million New Yorkers will be pushed off Medicaid roles in this same unwinding. Fortunately, people are organizing in response, calling for the right to healthcare, living wages, the abolition of poverty, and more. 

On Saturday, March 2nd, I stood next to Becca Forsyth of Elmira, New York, at the Poor People’s Campaign’s Mass Poor People and Low Wage Workers Statehouse Assembly in Albany, New York. Becca was one of dozens of low-income people who testified at simultaneous assemblies held in 31 state capitals and Washington, D.C. These assemblies launched 40 weeks of the mobilizing and organizing of poor and low-income eligible voters in the lead-up to the 2024 elections, while challenging those running for office, as well as elected officials, to confront poverty as the fourth-leading cause of death in America. Becca was not the only speaker to touch on the crisis of healthcare (and its connection to poverty and death), but her words stuck with me:

“Just since December 19th, I have lost more than a dozen people I loved dearly. In 74 days, I’ve watched as people I’ve known most of my life were literally squeezed to death by poverty and the catastrophic impact it has on our entire lives. People like Missy, a 47-year-old woman who was found lying beside the railroad tracks, dead… Or Gary, who died at the hands of the police while in a hospital for a mental breakdown. Or Loretta, a friend who was a friend before I even knew what the word friend meant, who is no longer with us because my community won’t spend money on substance-use treatment. Chemung County leads this state in way too many negative ways. We rank 59 out of the 62 counties in New York for health outcomes. We have outrageous homelessness, food insecurity, premature death rates, and lead poisoning. Our chances for getting out of poverty are extinguished before we even have a chance!”

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Just two days before I stood with Becca in Albany, the state capital, demanding the right to thrive and not just barely survive, I rallied with healthcare workers and community members at SUNY Downstate Hospital. With the support of New York Governor Kathy Hochul, SUNY Chancellor John King recently announced that his outfit may close SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, one of the few remaining public-safety-net hospitals in the state.

At that rally, community members, hospital workers, local politicians, and faith leaders shared information about the crucial role that hospital has played in the community. It served as a Covid refuge where thousands of lives were saved in the heat of the pandemic, as a critically safe birthing place for Black moms (crucial given the maternal health outcomes for so many women of color), as the only kidney transplant hospital in Brooklyn, and as one of the only remaining teaching hospitals in the area after the closure of such facilities, particularly in impoverished neighborhoods, across Brooklyn and the rest of New York.

Sadly, closing down hospitals or reducing their services in poorer neighborhoods is becoming all too typical of this nation. Big conglomerates are buying up chains of them and making decisions based only on their bottom lines, not the needs of our communities. In fact, more than 600 rural hospitals are now at risk of closing due to financial instability and that’s more than 30% of America’s rural facilities. For half of them, the possibility of closure is immediate, according to a new report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR).

Our Unwinding Health

Such Medicaid cuts and hospital closures are but two manifestations of a far larger attack on American health and healthcare in what’s fast being transformed into a death-dealing nation. They are but harbingers of an even larger “unwinding” of our health as a nation. Before the pandemic and the most recent cuts, 87 million Americans were already uninsured or underinsured. We’re talking about people sharing heart-attack medicine because they can’t afford their own prescriptions, burying their children for lack of healthcare, and relying on emergency rooms rather than preventative care, while going bankrupt in the process.

It’s simple enough. All too many of us are skipping needed care. In 2022, more than one of every four adults (28% of us) reported delaying or going without some combination of medical care, prescription drugs, mental healthcare, or dental care simply because they lacked the ability to pay.

Meanwhile, medical debt is growing all too rapidly. A Census Bureau analysis of such debt found that, in 2021, 15% of all American households owed medical debt — or 20 million people (nearly 1 in 12 adults). Indeed, the SIPP (Survey of Income and Program Participation) survey suggests that, in total, Americans owe at least $220 billion in medical debt, the biggest source of bankruptcy in the nation.

And of course, as I’ve written before, this is all connected to another reality: that life expectancy is down for everyone, while the poor can expect to die, on average, 12 to 13 years earlier than rich people. Worse yet, the death-rate gap between rich and poor in this country has risen by a staggering 570% since 1980. As the Washington Post reported, “America is increasingly a country of haves and have-nots, measured not just by bank accounts and property values but also by vital signs and grave markers. Dying prematurely has become the most telling measure of the nation’s growing inequality.”

Poor Health

In the face of all of this, you might wonder how things could get any worse. Recently, Congress announced potential cuts to another crucial food and health program for the poor. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (known as WIC) is at risk of a $1 billion shortfall, essentially guaranteeing harmful cuts to that lifeline for low-income families and children. If Congress refuses to fully fund the program, current funding levels simply won’t cover all eligible participants.

In fact, the $1 billion shortfall now slated to occur equals 1.5 months of benefits for all program beneficiaries or six months of benefits for all pregnant women and infants participating in WIC. House Republicans are currently refusing to approve the budget for this vital program that helps mothers and children up to age five access staples like fruit, vegetables, and infant formula, and connects them to healthcare resources.

In a statement to NBC News, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called WIC, “one of the most consequential, evidence-based public health programs available.” He implored Congress to fully fund the program, which provides “life-changing benefits and services” to its participants.

And Vilsack is anything but wrong when he speaks of the importance of that pro-poor, pro-health program. An abundance of research suggests the critical role that WIC plays in “supporting maternal health and child development. WIC participation during pregnancy is associated with lower risk of preterm birth, lower risk of low birth weight, and lower risk of infant mortality.” Children on WIC are more likely to consume a healthier diet, and this impact only grows the longer a child stays in the program, which also has a significant reach. As the Department of Agriculture reports, “Nearly 40 percent of America’s infants participate in WIC, which is available only to pregnant women, new mothers, infants, and children who meet income guidelines and are determined to be at nutritional risk by a health professional.”

So Much More Is Needed

But as such programs are cut to the bone and more people experience a plethora of problems already plaguing the health of the nation, many are likely to give up entirely, assuming there’s nothing to be done and that it’s just too costly to address inequality and poor health. As someone who has been organizing among the poor for more than 30 years, however, I want to suggest that, as a nation, this just can’t be as “good” as it gets.

Across the span of my lifetime, there have been debates about how to address the larger health crisis in American society. When I was in high school, there was already debate about the effectiveness of establishing a national healthcare program, as President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton campaigned on expanding healthcare and actually proposed a new plan for it in 1993. At the time, I remember hearing criticism of the Canadian system of nationalized healthcare. People there, it was said, experienced long lines, way too much paperwork, and a lack of options for patients.

Today, considering the way our healthcare system is unwinding, I could almost laugh (however grimly) at what it would mean to have that Canadian system of years past. All too sadly, however, that country has followed the United States in cutting and privatizing its healthcare system.

Many consider the Affordable Care Act (ACA) one of the most important policies adopted under the presidency of Barack Obama, given that more than 20 million people gained health coverage through it and the ACA’s policies made it easier for eligible people to enroll in Medicaid. In particular, the ACA expanded Medicaid coverage to nearly all adults with incomes up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level ($20,783 in 2024) and helped states with matching federal dollars expand Medicaid to more of their residents. Yet the ACA didn’t go nearly far enough. To date, 40 states and Washington, D.C., have adopted Medicaid expansion, while 10 states have not. Even in states with Medicaid expansion, too many of us are still not covered. And now we’re witnessing one of the greatest attacks on health and healthcare in decades (and just imagine what we’re likely to face if Donald Trump becomes our next president and/or the MAGA Republicans take Congress).

What this nation truly needs is a complete overhaul of its healthcare system. As a start, Medicaid needs to be expanded, extended, and built into a single-payer, universal healthcare plan. Workers need the right to living-wage jobs with generous benefits, including guaranteed paid family sick leave. Social welfare programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, WIC, and the Child Tax Credit need to be strengthened so that the abundance of this society is experienced by everyone. Household and medical debt would have to be cancelled, while drug-recovery programs would need to be fully funded. And parks and recreation centers, as well as grocery stores with quality, affordable food, would have to proliferate, starting in poor communities.

It’s not enough to protest the unwinding of pandemic Medicaid programs. Even that classic protest chant — “They say cut back, we say fight back!” — doesn’t go far enough. Instead, the 135 million poor and low-income Americans, and for that matter, the rest of us, must make healthcare and so much more into basic human rights.

Let me end then not with words of mine but with Becca Forsyth’s challenge to Americans in her Poor People’s Campaign testimony that day in Albany. “We must stop this raging storm of policy violence that is killing our friends and neighbors,” she said movingly. “It doesn’t have to be this way! We can wield our votes as powerful demands. The time for sitting on the sidelines is over. We have to move forward together like our lives depend on it… the lives of our children! Because they do!!”

How right she is!

Copyright 2024 Liz Theoharis

Via Tomdispatch.com

The Biden administration’s sales pitch for the purported benefits of military outlays began in earnest last October, when the president gave a rare Oval Office address to promote a $106-billion emergency allocation that included tens of billions of dollars of weaponry for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. MAGA Republicans in Congress had been blocking the funding from going forward and the White House was searching for a new argument to win them over. The president and his advisers settled on an answer that could just as easily have come out of the mouth of Donald Trump: jobs, jobs, jobs. As Joe Biden put it:

“We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own stores… equipment that defends America and is made in America: Patriot missiles for air defense batteries made in Arizona; artillery shells manufactured in 12 states across the country — in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas; and so much more.”

It should be noted that two of the four states he singled out (Arizona and Pennsylvania) are swing states crucial to his reelection bid, while the other two are red states with Republican senators he’s been trying to win over to vote for another round of military aid to Ukraine.

Lest you think that Biden’s economic pitch for such aid was a one-off event, Politico reported that, in the wake of his Oval Office speech, administration officials were distributing talking points to members of Congress touting the economic benefits of such aid. Politico dubbed this approach “Bombenomics.” Lobbyists for the administration even handed out a map purporting to show how much money such assistance to Ukraine would distribute to each of the 50 states. And that, by the way, is a tactic companies like Lockheed Martin routinely use to promote the continued funding of costly, flawed weapons systems like the F-35 fighter jet. Still, it should be troubling to see the White House stooping to the same tactics.

Yes, it’s important to provide Ukraine with the necessary equipment and munitions to defend itself from Russia’s grim invasion, but the case should be made on the merits, not through exaggerated accounts about the economic impact of doing so. Otherwise, the military-industrial complex will have yet another never-ending claim on our scarce national resources.

Military Keynesianism and Cold War Fallacies

The official story about military spending and the economy starts like this: the massive buildup for World War II got America out of the Great Depression, sparked the development of key civilian technologies (from computers to the internet), and created a steady flow of well-paying manufacturing jobs that were part of the backbone of America’s industrial economy.

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There is indeed a grain of truth in each of those assertions, but they all ignore one key fact: the opportunity costs of throwing endless trillions of dollars at the military means far less is invested in other crucial American needs, ranging from housing and education to public health and environmental protection. Yes, military spending did indeed help America recover from the Great Depression but not because it was military spending. It helped because it was spending, period. Any kind of spending at the levels devoted to fighting World War II would have revived the economy. While in that era, such military spending was certainly a necessity, today similar spending is more a question of (corporate) politics and priorities than of economics.

In these years Pentagon spending has soared and the defense budget continues to head toward an annual trillion-dollar mark, while the prospects of tens of millions of Americans have plummeted. More than 140 million of us now fall into poor or low-income categories, including one out of every six children. More than 44 million of us suffer from hunger in any given year. An estimated 183,000 Americans died of poverty-related causes in 2019, more than from homicide, gun violence, diabetes, or obesity. Meanwhile, ever more Americans are living on the streets or in shelters as homeless people hit a record 650,000 in 2022.

Perhaps most shockingly, the United States now has the lowest life expectancy of any industrialized country, even as the International Institute for Strategic Studies reports that it now accounts for 40% of the world’s — yes, the whole world’s! — military spending. That’s four times more than its closest rival, China. In fact, it’s more than the next 15 countries combined, many of which are U.S. allies. It’s long past time for a reckoning about what kinds of investments truly make Americans safe and economically secure — a bloated military budget or those aimed at meeting people’s basic needs.

What will it take to get Washington to invest in addressing non-military needs at the levels routinely lavished on the Pentagon? For that, we would need presidential leadership and a new, more forward-looking Congress. That’s a tough, long-term goal to reach, but well worth pursuing. If a shift in budget priorities were to be implemented in Washington, the resulting spending could, for instance, create anywhere from 9% more jobs for wind and solar energy production to three times as many jobs in education.

As for the much-touted spinoffs from military research, investing directly in civilian activities rather than relying on a spillover from Pentagon spending would produce significantly more useful technologies far more quickly. In fact, for the past few decades, the civilian sector of the economy has been far nimbler and more innovative than Pentagon-funded initiatives, so — don’t be surprised — military spinoffs have greatly diminished. Instead, the Pentagon is desperately seeking to lure high-tech companies and talent back into its orbit, a gambit which, if successful, is likely to undermine the nation’s ability to create useful products that could push the civilian sector forward. Companies and workers who might otherwise be involved in developing vaccines, producing environmentally friendly technologies, or finding new sources of green energy will instead be put to work building a new generation of deadly weapons.

Diminishing Returns

In recent years, the Pentagon budget has approached its highest level since World War II: $886 billion and counting. That’s hundreds of billions more than was spent in the peak year of the Vietnam War or at the height of the Cold War. Nonetheless, the actual number of jobs in weapons manufacturing has plummeted dramatically from three million in the mid-1980s to 1.1 million now. Of course, a million jobs is nothing to sneeze at, but the downward trend in arms-related employment is likely to continue as automation and outsourcing grow. The process of reducing arms industry jobs will be accelerated by a greater reliance on software over hardware in the development of new weapons systems that incorporate artificial intelligence. Given the focus on emerging technologies, assembly line jobs will be reduced, while the number of scientists and engineers involved in weapons-related work will only grow.

In addition, as the journalist Taylor Barnes has pointed out, the arms industry jobs that do remain are likely to pay significantly less than in the past, as unionization rates at the major contractors continue to fall precipitously, while two-tier union contracts deny incoming workers the kind of pay and benefits their predecessors enjoyed. To cite two examples: in 1971, 69% of Lockheed Martin workers were unionized, while in 2022 that number was 19%; at Northrop Grumman today, a mere 4% of its employees are unionized. The very idea that weapons production provides high-paying manufacturing jobs with good benefits is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

More and better-paying jobs could be created by directing more spending to domestic needs, but that would require a dramatic change in the politics and composition of Congress.

The Military Is Not an “Anti-Poverty Program”

Members of Congress and the Washington elite continue to argue that the U.S. military is this country’s most effective anti-poverty program. While the pay, benefits, training, and educational funding available to members of that military have certainly helped some of them improve their lot, that’s hardly the full picture. The potential downside of military service puts the value of any financial benefits in grim perspective.

Many veterans of America’s disastrous post-9/11 wars, after all, risked their physical and mental health, not to speak of their lives, during their time in the military. After all, 40% of veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars have reported service-related disabilities. Physical and mental health problems suffered by veterans range from lost limbs to traumatic brain injuries to post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). They have also been at greater risk of homelessness than the population as a whole. Most tragically, four times as many veterans have committed suicide as the number of military personnel killed by enemy forces in any of the U.S. wars of this century.

The toll of such disastrous conflicts on veterans is one of many reasons that war should be the exception, not the rule, in U.S. foreign policy.

And in that context, there can be little doubt that the best way to fight poverty is by doing so directly, not as a side-effect of building an increasingly militarized society. If, to get a leg up in life, people need education and training, it should be provided to civilians and veterans alike.

Tradeoffs

Federal efforts to address the problems outlined above have been hamstrung by a combination of overspending on the Pentagon and the unwillingness of Congress to more seriously tax wealthy Americans to address poverty and inequality. (After all, the wealthiest 1% of us are now cumulatively worth more than the 291 million of us in the “bottom” 90%, which represents a massive redistribution of wealth in the last half-century.)

The tradeoffs are stark. The Pentagon’s annual budget is significantly more than 20 times the $37 billion the government now invests annually in reducing greenhouse gas emissions as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, spending on weapons production and research alone is more than eight times as high. The Pentagon puts out more each year for one combat aircraft — the overpriced, underperforming F-35 — than the entire budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, one $13 billion aircraft carrier costs more to produce than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. Similarly, in 2020, Lockheed Martin alone received $75 billion in federal contracts and that’s more than the budgets of the State Department and the Agency for International Development combined. In other words, the sum total of that company’s annual contracts adds up to the equivalent of the entire U.S. budget for diplomacy.

Simply shifting funds from the Pentagon to domestic programs wouldn’t, of course, be a magical solution to all of America’s economic problems. Just to achieve such a shift in the first place would, of course, be a major political undertaking and the funds being shifted would have to be spent effectively. Furthermore, even cutting the Pentagon budget in half wouldn’t be enough to take into account all of this country’s unmet needs. That would require a comprehensive package, including not just a change in budget priorities but an increase in federal revenues and a crackdown on waste, fraud, and abuse in the outlay of government loans and grants. It would also require the kind of attention and focus now reserved for planning to fund the military.

One comprehensive plan for remaking the economy to better serve all Americans is the moral budget of the Poor People’s Campaign, a national movement of low-income people inspired by the 1968 initiative of the same name spearheaded by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., before his assassination that April 4th. Its central issues are promoting racial justice, ending poverty, opposing militarism, and supporting environmental restoration. Its moral budget proposes investing more than $1.2 trillion in domestic needs, drawn from both cuts to Pentagon spending and increases in tax revenues from wealthy individuals and corporations. Achieving such a shift in American priorities is, at best, undoubtedly a long-term undertaking, but it does offer a better path forward than continuing to neglect basic needs to feed the war machine.

If current trends continue, the military economy will only keep on growing at the expense of so much else we need as a society, exacerbating inequality, stifling innovation, and perpetuating a policy of endless war. We can’t allow the illusion — and it is an illusion! — of military-fueled prosperity to allow us to neglect the needs of tens of millions of people or to hinder our ability to envision the kind of world we want to build for future generations. The next time you hear a politician, a Pentagon bureaucrat, or a corporate functionary tell you about the economic wonders of massive military budgets, don’t buy the hype.

Copyright 2024 William D. Hartung

Via Tomdispatch.com

In December, President Biden signed a record authorization of $886 billion in “national defense” spending for 2024, including funds for the Pentagon proper and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. Add to that tens of billions of dollars more in likely emergency military aid for Ukraine and Israel, and such spending could well top $900 billion for the first time this year.

Meanwhile, the administration’s $100-billion-plus emergency military aid package that failed to pass Congress last month is likely to slip by in some form this year, while the House and Senate are almost guaranteed to add tens of billions more for “national defense” projects in specific states and districts, as happened in two of the last three years.

Of course, before the money actually starts flowing, Congress needs to pass an appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2024, clearing the way for that money to be spent. As of this writing, the House and Senate had indeed agreed to a tentative deal to sign onto the $886 billion that was authorized in December. A trillion-dollar version of such funding could be just around the corner.  (If past practice is any guide, more than half of that sum could go directly to corporations, large and small.)

A trillion dollars is a hard figure to process. In the 1960s, when the federal budget was a fraction of what it is now, Republican Senator Everett Dirksen allegedly said, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Whether he did or not, that quote neatly captures how congressional attitudes toward federal spending have changed. After all, today, a billion dollars is less than a rounding error at the Pentagon. The department’s budget is now hundreds of billions of dollars more than at the height of the Vietnam War and over twice what it was when President Eisenhower warned of the “unwarranted influence” wielded by what he called “the military-industrial complex.”

To offer just a few comparisons: annual spending on the costly, dysfunctional F-35 combat aircraft alone is greater than the entire budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2020, Lockheed Martin’s contracts with the Pentagon were worth more than the budgets of the State Department and the Agency for International Development combined, and its arms-related revenues continue to rival the government’s entire investment in diplomacy. One $13 billion aircraft carrier costs more than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. Overall, more than half of the discretionary budget Congress approves every year — basically everything the federal government spends other than on mandatory programs like Medicare and Social Security — goes to the Pentagon.

It would, I suppose, be one thing if such huge expenditures were truly needed to protect the country or make the world a safer place. However, they have more to do with pork-barrel politics and a misguided “cover the globe” military strategy than a careful consideration of what might be needed for actual “defense.”

Congressional Follies

The road to an $886-billion military budget authorization began early last year with a debt-ceiling deal negotiated by President Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. That rolled back domestic spending levels, while preserving the administration’s proposal for the Pentagon intact. McCarthy, since ousted as speaker, had been pressed by members of the right-wing “Freedom Caucus” and their fellow travelers for just such spending cuts. (He had little choice but to agree, since that group proved to be his margin of victory in a speaker’s race that ran to 15 ballots.)

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There was a brief glimmer of hope that the budget cutters in the Freedom Caucus might also go after the bloated Pentagon budget rather than inflict all the fiscal pain on domestic programs. Prominent right-wing Republicans like Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) pledged to put Pentagon spending reductions “on the table,” but then only went after the military’s alleged “woke agenda,” which boiled down to cutting a few billion dollars slated for fighting racism and sexual harassment while supporting reproductive freedom within the armed forces. Oh wait, Jordan also went after spending on the development of alternative energy sources as “woke.” In any case, he focused on just a minuscule share of the department’s overall budget.

Prominent Republicans outside Congress expressed stronger views about bringing the Pentagon to heel, but their perspectives got no traction on Capitol Hill. For instance, Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation, perhaps America’s most influential conservative think tank, made the case for reining in the Pentagon at American Conservative magazine:

“In the past, Congress accepted the D.C. canard that a bigger budget alone equals a stronger military. But now, facing down a record debt to the tune of $242,000 per household, conservatives are ready to tackle an entrenched problem and confront the political establishment, unaccountable federal bureaucrats, and well-connected defense contractors all at once in order to keep the nation both solvent and secure.”

Even more surprising, former Trump Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller released a memoir in which he called for a dramatic slashing of the Pentagon budget. “We could,” he argued, “cut our defense budget in half and it would still be twice as big as China’s.”

Ultimately, however, such critiques had zero influence over the Pentagon budget debate in the House, which quickly degenerated into a fight about a series of toxic amendments attacking reproductive freedom and LGTBQ and transgender rights in the military. Representative Colin Allred (D-TX) rightly denounced such amendments as a “shameful display of extremism” and across-the-board opposition by Democrats ensured that the first iteration of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024 would be defeated and some of the most egregious Republican proposals eliminated later in the year. 

In the meantime, virtually all mainstream press coverage and most congressional debate focused on those culture war battles rather than why this country was poised to shove so much money at the Pentagon in the first place.

Threat Inflation and the “Arsenal of Democracy”

Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the strategic rationales put forward for the flood of new Pentagon outlays don’t faintly hold up to scrutiny. First and foremost in the Pentagon’s argument for virtually unlimited access to the Treasury is the alleged military threat posed by China. But as Dan Grazier of the Project on Government Oversight has pointed out, that country’s military strategy is “inherently defensive”:

“[T]he investments being made [by China] are not suited for foreign adventurism but are instead designed to use relatively low-cost weapons to defend against massively expensive American weapons. The nation’s primary military strategy is to keep foreign powers, and especially the United States, as far away from its shores as possible in a policy the Chinese government calls ‘active defense.’”

The greatest point of potential conflict between the U.S. and China is, of course, Taiwan. But a war over that island would come at a staggering cost for all concerned and might even escalate into a nuclear confrontation. A series of war games conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that, while the United States could indeed “win” a war defending Taiwan from a Chinese amphibious assault, it would be a Pyrrhic victory. “The United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of servicemembers,” it reported. “Taiwan saw its economy devastated. Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many years.” And a nuclear confrontation between China and the United States, which CSIS didn’t include in its assessment, would be a first-class catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions.

The best route to preventing a future Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be to revive Washington’s “One China” policy that calls for China to commit itself to a peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s status and for the U.S. to forswear support for that island’s formal independence. In other words, diplomacy, rather than increasing the Pentagon budget to “win” such a war, would be the way to go.

The second major driver of higher Pentagon budgets is allegedly the strain on this country’s arms manufacturing base caused by supplying tens of billions of dollars of weaponry to Ukraine, including artillery shells and missiles that are running short in American stockpiles. The answer, according to the Pentagon and the arms industry, is to further supersize this country’s already humongous military-industrial complex to produce enough weaponry to supply Ukraine (and now Israel, too), while acquiring sufficient weapons systems for a future war with China.

There are two problems with such arguments. First, supplying Ukraine doesn’t justify a permanent expansion of the U.S. arms industry. In fact, such aid to Kyiv needs to be accompanied by a now-missing diplomatic strategy designed to head off an even longer, ever more grinding war.

Second, the kinds of weapons needed for a war with China would, for the most part, be different from those relevant to a land war in Ukraine, so weaponry sent to Ukraine would have little relevance to readiness for a potential war with China (which Washington should, in any case, be working to prevent, not preparing for). 

The Disastrous Costs of a Militarized Foreign Policy

Before investing ever more tax dollars in building an ever-expanding garrison state, the military strategy of the United States in the current global environment should be seriously debated. Just buying ever more bombs, missiles, drones, and next-generation artificial intelligence-driven weaponry is not, in fact, a strategy, though it is a boon to the military-industrial complex and an invitation to a destabilizing new arms race.

Unfortunately, neither Congress nor the Biden administration seems inclined to seriously consider an approach that would emphasize investing in diplomatic and economic tools over force or the threat of force. Given this country’s staggeringly expensive failures in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in this century (which cost trillions of dollars), resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, and leaving staggering numbers of American veterans with physical and psychological injuries (as extensively documented by the Costs of War Project at Brown University), you might think a different approach to the use of your tax dollars was in order, but no such luck.

There are indeed a few voices in Congress advocating restraint at the Pentagon, including Representatives Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Barbara Lee (D-CA), who have proposed a $100 billion reduction in that department’s budget as a first step toward a more balanced national security policy.  Such efforts, however, must overcome an inhospitable political environment created by the endlessly exaggerated military threats facing this country and the political power of the arms industry, as well as its allies in Washington. Those allies, of course, include President Biden, who has labeled the U.S. an “arsenal of democracy” in his efforts to promote a new round of weapons aid to Ukraine.  Not unlike his predecessor, he is touting the potential benefits of arms-production investments in companies in electoral swing states.

Sadly, throwing more money at the arms industry sacrifices future needs for short-term economic gains that are modest indeed. Were that money going into producing green jobs, a more resilient infrastructure, improved scientific and technical education, and a more robust public health system, we would find ourselves in a different world. Those should be the pillars of any American economic revival rather than the all-too-modest side effects of weapons development in fueling economic growth. Despite huge increases in funding since the 1980s, actual jobs in the arms manufacturing industry have, in fact, plummeted from three million to 1.1 million — and, mind you, those figures come from the arms industry’s largest trade association. 

The United Auto Workers, one of the unions with the most members working in the arms industry, has recognized this reality and formed a Just Transition Committee. As noted by Spencer Ackerman at the Nation, it’s designed to “examine the size, scope, and impact of the U.S. military-industrial complex that employs thousands of UAW members and dominates the global arms trade.” According to Brandon Mancilla, director of the UAW’s Region 9A, which represents 50,000 active and retired workers in New York, New England, and Puerto Rico, the committee will “think about what it would mean to actually have a just transition, what used to be called a ‘peace conversion,’ of folks who work in the weapons and defense industry into something else.”

The UAW initiative parallels a sharp drop in unionization rates at major weapons makers (as documented by journalist Taylor Barnes). To cite two examples: in 1971, 69% of Lockheed Martin workers were unionized, while in 2022 that number was 19%; at Northrop Grumman today, a mere 4% of its employees are unionized, a dip that reflects a conscious strategy of the big weapons-making firms to outsource work to non-union subcontractors and states with anti-union “right to work” laws, while exporting tens of thousands of jobs overseas as part of multinational projects like the F-35 program. So much for the myth that defense industry jobs are more secure or have better pay and benefits than jobs in other parts of the economy.

A serious national conversation is needed on what a genuine defense strategy would look like, rather than one based on fantasies of global military dominance. Otherwise, the overly militarized approach to foreign and economic policy that has become the essence of Washington budget-making could be extended endlessly and disastrously into the future, something this country literally can’t afford to let happen.

Copyright 2024 William D. Hartung

Via Tomdispatch.com

Technological innovation in the last couple of decades has brought fame and huge wealth to the likes of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. Often feted as geniuses, they are the faces behind the gadgets and media that so many of us depend upon.

Sometimes they are controversial. Sometimes the level of their influence is criticised.

But they also benefit from a common mythology which elevates their status. That myth is the belief that executive “visionaries” leading vast corporations are the engines which power essential breakthroughs too ambitious or futuristic for sluggish public institutions.

For there are many who consider the private sector to be far better equipped than the public sector to solve major challenges. We see such ideology embodied in ventures like OpenAI. This successful company was founded on the premise that while artificial intelligence is too consequential to be left to corporations alone, the public sector is simply incapable of keeping up.

The approach is linked to a political philosophy which champions the idea of pioneering entrepreneurs as figureheads who advance civilisation through sheer individual brilliance and determination.

In reality, however, most modern technological building blocks – like car batteries, space rockets, the internet, smart phones, and GPS – emerged from publicly funded research. They were not the inspired work of corporate masters of the universe.

And my work suggests a further disconnect: that the profit motive seen across Silicon Valley (and beyond) frequently impedes innovation rather than improving it.

For example, attempts to profit from the COVID vaccine had a detrimental impact on global access to the medicine. Or consider how recent ventures into space tourism seem to prioritise experiences for extremely wealthy people over less lucrative but more scientifically valuable missions.

More broadly, the thirst for profit means intellectual property restrictions tend to restrict collaboration between (and even within) companies. There is also evidence that short-term shareholder demands distort real innovation in favour of financial reward.

Allowing executives focused on profits to set technological agendas can incur public costs too. It’s expensive dealing with the hazardous low-earth orbit debris caused by space tourism, or the complex regulatory negotiations involved in protecting human rights around AI.

So there is a clear tension between the demands of profit and long-term technological progress. And this partly explains why major historical innovations emerged from public sector institutions which are relatively insulated from short-term financial pressures. Market forces alone rarely achieve transformative breakthroughs like space programs or the creation of the internet.

Excessive corporate dominance has other dimming effects. Research scientists seem to dedicate valuable time towards chasing funding influenced by business interests. They are also increasingly incentivised to go into the profitable private sector.

Here those scientists’ and engineers’ talents may be directed at helping advertisers to better keep hold of our attention. Or they may be tasked with finding ways for corporations to make more money from our personal data.

Projects which might address climate change, public health or global inequality are less likely to be the focus.

Likewise, research suggests that university laboratories are moving towards a “science for profit” model through industry partnerships.

Digital destiny

But true scientific innovation needs institutions and people guided by principles that go beyond financial incentives. And fortunately, there are places which support them.

“Open knowledge institutions” and platform cooperatives are focused on innovation for the collective good rather than individual glory. Governments could do much more to support and invest in these kinds of organisations.

If they do, the coming decades could see the development of healthier innovation ecosystems which go beyond corporations and their executive rule. They would create an environment of cooperation rather than competition, for genuine social benefit.

There will still be a place for the quirky “genius” of Musk and Zuckerberg and their fellow Silicon Valley billionaires. But relying on their bloated corporations to design and dominate technological innovation is a mistake.

For real discovery and progress cannot rely on the minds and motives of a few famous men. It involves investing in institutions which are rooted in democracy and sustainability – not just because it is more ethical, but because in the the long term, it will be much more effective.

Peter Bloom, Professor of Management, University of Essex

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.