The Basis of Security

Most Madame M and Our Readers:

An excellent piece about the Chris Hedges talk!

What is the greatest certain threat to national security?  China?  Iran?  Terrorism? Nope.  Not even the national debt is.

The economy itself is the greatest national security threat.  While it holds elements of both symptom and cause, national debt is more symptom than cause of the threat to our national security.  And that symptom arises from a) cultural unwillingness to confront reality, b) class evasion of financial responsibility to fund government, c) gross over-allocation (and misallocation) of resources, and d) a plutocratic and net consumptive economy.

One does not have to read the book Empire of Illusion to understand that America and Americans are largely in both denial and the willing embrace of ignorance about the realities in front of them.  Conditions and rule-sets have both changed (and been changed), particularly about the political-economy.  Presented with either 1) adapting, or 2) confronting those doing the changing, we have done neither.  We have used our accumulated civilizational wealth to put off hard decisions, and have weakened ourselves in the process.  Those doing the changing have found in us ready receivers of their deflection, deception, diversion, and manipulation.  Many decades now of poor decisions, including selfish and short-sighted decisions and consumptive and unsustainable decisions, both as individuals and as governments (local, state, and national), have cascaded our problems and made them excruciatingly harder to address.  And our response to that hard picture has been to delay and cleave to illusion and diversion all the more.

There is also underfunding (often deliberate and selfish) of the government by the upper class. Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP are at the lowest levels in over 50 years.  Effective tax rates (given the prevalence of different rates for unearned income and the carefully emplaced tax code provisions that allow further evasion) for the upper class and corporations are at their sustained lowest in 80 years.  This leads to markedly reduced funds for government.  And because we 1) demand more of our government(s) than ever before, 2) over-allocate and mis-allocate, and 3) yet continue to embrace illusion, we then often borrow—deeply—which only weakens us further. 

And not just governments borrow heavily—individuals and companies do too.

The general pattern of us as individuals, as society, and as economy, is one of consumption, not investment.  As seen in our individual mind-sets and practices (a short-term—usually at most monthly—fixation); our corporate mind-sets and practices (next quarter’s profit maximization); and our governments (short-term—usually yearly—tunnel visions, and even then, usually consumptive rather than investment in infrastructure, research and development, etc.).  At the federal government level, we have given the lion’s share of resources primarily to a “security” establishment and the elderly, and away from the young whose productivity is needed so intensely.  Security (military-industrial, intelligence, etc.) spending has been at such sustained high levels for so long our Framers would be unable to imagine it—and might be alarmed.  Such over-allocated spending is in the main a drain on the underlying economy, with any beneficial economic side-effects few and far between, especially when compared to what those resources could do by direct economic investment.  As for spending on the elderly, I’m not speaking of Social Security, which is a minor problem and one readily addressable.  I’m speaking of medical spending, which is, yes, unsustainable on the present model, but it is the resource diversion from the productive to the no longer productive (and largely consumptive) that is the colossal mis-allocation.  While the young founder with few economic resources and vastly reduced economic opportunity, we distribute resources in droves to the largest consumers of sick care—the elderly—whose economically productive years are past.  And by the consumption of those resources—often in the last year of life—the young are denied them, meaning the future of the economy has been set to be weakened, another cascading problem and a harbinger of Great Power, not just Superpower, decline.

There were some signs before, but the last 30-40 years have seen the rise of the plutocratic economy.  Steadily and systematically, a globalized corporate and upper class have changed the rules and structure of the economy.  Changed it away from middle-class centric to one instead characterized by often commoditized labor and absolute profit maximization.  An economy where considerations of patriotism, social responsibility, and sharing the gains of productivity have become not only irrelevant, but roadblocks to opportunistic manipulation of the “free market.” Things like the rise in Medicaid expenditures are reflective symptoms of the pattern of socializing costs and privatizing profits.  This economy—one where a factory that is not making ENOUGH profit is shipped overseas (and effectively at taxpayer expense)—rewards corporations and the wealthy, while enfeebling and shrinking the middle class foundation of what could be a sustainable, vibrant economy.  By doing so, we instead get a structurally weak servant-economy that transfers wealth from net consumers (U.S.) to net producers (China and the new economies).  And by this pattern, China puts us in their debt, making us vulnerable, especially if we have to keep borrowing.

“Civilizations die from suicide, not from murder,” Toynbee said. The selfishness, dysfunction, and lack of vision described in the paragraphs above make a wreck of an economy, and when that economy is center-stage of the world’s supposed superpower, civilization’s anchor becomes uprooted.  The economy drives nearly everything, and those inside and outside the Beltway have developed myopia about that fact.  The short-sighted in the “security” interest group, for example, say we HAVE to have all the gizmos and forces, and we HAVE to have them all over the world, because there are steep risks in not doing so.  They say this with no consideration to the overall economy.

They’re right, there are risks.  But the possible (and often vague) risks they talk about must be compared to the certain risk as the economy continues to weaken.  To address possible risk while ignoring certain risk is the height of not just irresponsibility, but morally criminal embrace of illusion.  Without a strong, vibrant, sustainable, middle-class centric economy, none of the rest of what you might want is possible: not “defense,” not spending on the elderly, not buying stuff from overseas, not even protecting the prime foundation of an economy—the environment.

Gallup, in the most comprehensive world-wide polling ever done, came to the greatest single theme on the minds of adults of the world: a living wage job for themselves and the rest of the people.  In that simple encapsulation is the greatest chance for peace, stability, sustainability, biosphere health, and progress in the human condition.

Because “it’s (still) the economy, stupid.”