Kevin Brooks wrote:
Vince Brannigan wrote in message ...

Kevin Brooks wrote:



You want to debate the morality of weapons development, find somebody
else. The issue here was the impact of defense spending upon the GDP.


The point is complex but connected. lets say you use your bicycle to
deliver a load of bolt cutters to your local bicycle thieves and
therefore have to spend your income from delivering the boltcutters on a
better lock. you can work very hard but never live any better.

Vince


Stop wandering away from the argument at hand, which was not about
bikes or boltcutters, but about the GDP, which, contrary to your
claim, can be contributed to by defense expenditure. Defense
expenditure is what brought you this medium to debate the issue
within, for gosh sakes.

nonsense The same money spent in the civilian side is simply much more
productive. If command economies worked to increase productivity,
communism would work. The DOD is a command economy. Command economies
are very good ways to organize consumption of public goods. e.g.
national parks or the navy. There is simply no evidence that they are
equally effective at increasing productivity. As I pointed out the Arpa
program was simply a way of funneling money into a civilian research
infrastructure.

If military psendign was productive peopel would orgianze comapneis and
go into the business. its isnt, primarily becsue so much of the money
is inevitably spent on useless activites.

Anytine you take stored wealth and convert it into "something" you
technically increase the GDP by the expenditure. but unlesss the
expenditure creates somethign that produces a further streaem of goods
and services, it is merely consumption.


Vince



Vince