Pynchon and the current situation

[Terrance]

Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> Terrance:
> > How will this work?
> 
> The way it always has worked.  The U.S. government
> pays for weapon systems and the infrastructure that
> supports war and "homeland security".  That money goes
> into the coffers of the companies  that provide the
> products and services necessary for War and "homeland
> security". These companies spend it by hiring people,
> manufacturing weapons and other products.  Economic
> development over the past 60 years is more complex
> than any analysis you or I could provide in a 3k email
> message of course, but I'm confident that  a study of
> the U.S. economy over the past many decades will
> demonstrate that the military-industrial complex
> expands with war and preparations for war and pushes
> the U.S. economy along with it, despite the occasional
> cyclical aberration.

We won't need more than a 3k email to prove that your analysis is 
wrong. They way it has always worked?  Before World War II, the
allocation of 
resources to military purposes remained at token levels, 
typically no more than 1 percent of GNP.  The massive mobilization 
of the early 1940s drove the military share of GNP to more than 
41% at its peak in 1943-44. This is what P addresses in GR. After 44,
the percentage dropped to around 4%. It's averaged between 4%  and 8%
since. 
The trend, if we consider that defense was only 1% prior to W.W.II, has
been
positive, from 1% to around 6% avg. 

But this upward trend, not, as you say,  the way it always works, has
been a drag on the USA economy. And the war economy of W.W.II, unique is
so many ways, not only in the staggering figures,  can not be compared
with the current situation. 

War, since W.W.II, has caused a deterioration in the strength
of the U.S. economy relative to its industrial rivals. While it's true,
that there are some who profit from war, and that the profits,
particularly if there is a military success, from, in  part, the opening
of foreign lands or regions to USA business, the profits,  highly
concentrated in certain special segments of the economy do not bluster
or stimulate the economy or even offset the costs of war.  The costs of
War, and we learn this from GR, are in general distributed among the
preterit masses, while its profits revert to the elite few. This is
applicable to the current mess, but to argue that this war will
stimulate the economy is not good economics. We can critique, what will
surely result in a continence of the internal and external consolidation
and concentration of power and wealth, and give voice to the
undederprivileged who will suffer, but your broad and unfounded
generalization, "this is the way it always works," 
is step away from this task imho. I argued this same point during the
globalization debates here. If we persist in stooping to the rhetorical
devices of those we oppose, we we will accomplish nothing.