Unemployment and the Pentagon Budget: Is There Anything in 'The Empty Pork Barrel,'.

摘要

A recent paper, 'The Empty Pork Barrel: Unemployment and the Pentagon Budget,' published by the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan (PIRGM) concludes that the level of unemployment is directly related to the size of the defense budget. According to this analysis, every $1 billion in the defense budget reduces the number of available jobs in the U.S. by 10,600. Elementary mathematics says if $1 billion costs 10,600 jobs, $10 billion costs 106,000 jobs, and $100 billion (the approximate level of the current defense budget) costs over 1 million jobs. These are big numbers in anybody's book. The significance of this finding that it is possible to simultaneously lower total Federal spending and provide more employment is easy to see. Whether one is 'anti-defense' or 'pro-jobs,' a reduction in the Pentagon's budget looks to be in one's self-interest. It is not surprising then that 'The Empty Pork Barrel' and an earlier version issued in June 1974 have received wide-spread attention. Any medicine that holds forth the hope of alleviating two problems with a single dose will attract a noisy following. Nevertheless, there are no claims of potency, nor endorsements of true believers that can change the conclusions of bad analysis into good medicine. Before members of Congress and the press rush to tout the conclusion of 'The Empty Pork Barrel,' as the truth, they would be well advised to scrutinize the analysis upon which it is based. If they do, they will discover the analysis is bad.