If you subtract military spending what would this year's GDP be so far?

[JCMach1]

It's a serious question... some background follows below...


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From the middle of the 19th century but especially after the Second World War, two models of empire building competed on a world scale: One predominantly based on military conquests, involving direct invasions, proxy invading armies and subsidized separatist military forces; and the other predominantly based on large-scale, long-term economic penetration via a combination of investments, loans, credits and trade in which ‘market’ power and the superiority (greater productivity) in the means of production led to the construction of a virtual empire.

Throughout the 19th to the middle of the 20th centuries, European and US empire building resorted to the military route, especially in Asia, Africa, Central America, North America and the Caribbean. By far the British and US colonized the greatest territories through military force, followed by the introduction of state directed mercantile systems, the Monroe doctrine for the US and imperial preference for the British. South America following independence became the site of the growth of market powered empire building. British and later US capital successfully captured the commanding heights of the economies, especially the agro-mining and petroleum export sectors, trade, finance and in some cases attached customs and treasury to cover debt collection. As late developing capitalist countries and emerging imperial powers (EIP), the US, Germany and Japan faced the hostility of the established European empires and limited access to strategic markets and raw materials. The EIP adopted several strategies in challenging the existing empires. These included demands for free trade with their colonies and the end of imperial (colonial) privilege/ preference. The EIP established parallel colonial settlements and concessions, bordering the old empires. They fomented and financed ‘anti-colonial’ revolts to replace existing colonial collaborators and pursued economic penetration via superior production. They disseminated political propaganda promoting ‘democratic’ values within a market driven empire. World War Two marked the decline of the European military based colonial empire and the US transition from a predominantly market to military-based empire. This ‘transition’ was facilitated by earlier military occupations in the Philippines and the Caribbean and a multitude of invasions in Central America...

During the Bush-Clinton years, US military-driven empire-building vastly expanded its commitments in financing and providing troops into the Balkan and Iraq wars, military entry into Somalia, the bombing of the Sudan, the increased subsidy of Israel’s colonial wars, the Afghan wars, Colombia’s counter-insurgency and to a lesser extent the Philippine’s counter-insurgency and counter-separatist wars. While the US spent billions to prop up a gangster-ridden and corrupt KLA regime in Kosova in order to spend billions more in building a huge military base, Germany was reaping the economic benefits of its economic hegemony in the relatively prosperous regimes of Croatia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. While the US spent hundreds of billions in the First and Second Gulf Wars, China, the new emerging market-driven empire builder, was looking to sign lucrative oil and gas contracts in the Middle East, especially with Iran. While the US was backing an unpopular minority regime backed by its client Ethiopian military force in Somalia, China was signing major oil contracts in Sudan, Angola and Nigeria and even in Northern Somalia (Puntland). While the US military-centered empire-building state was giving away over $3 billion in military aid (plus transferring its most up-to-date military technology to competitor firms) per year to Israel, European, Asian and Latin American private and public enterprises were signing long-term lucrative contracts with the Gulf oil states as well as with Iran.

A clear sign of the long-term economic decay of the US global competitive position between 2002-2008 is evidenced by the fact that a 40% depreciation of the dollar has failed to substantially improve the US balance of payments, let alone produce a trade surplus. Despite the handicap of appreciating currencies, China, Germany and Japan continued to accumulate trade surpluses, especially with the US. While the US spent hundreds of billions in Asian wars, CIA propaganda and subversive operations in the former USSR, Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, the Caribbean (Cuba/Venezuela) and the Caucuses, the principle beneficiaries were the revitalized European market-driven empire-builders and the newly emerging market empire builders.

While the US spends enormous sums in building new military bases surrounding Russia, including new offensive operations in Kosova, Poland and the Czech Republic, with new preparations for NATO bases in Georgia and the Ukraine, Russian, Chinese and European capital expands buying out or investing in privatized and public-private strategic mining, petrol and manufacturing enterprises in Africa, Latin America, Australia and the Gulf.

While China harnesses foreign capital, including major US MNCs to make itself the ‘manufacturing workshop of the world’, Germany with its high precision heavy manufacturers are prospering by ‘constructing the workshops’ for the Chinese. US manufacturers and productive capital flee to state-subsidized (via tax reductions and low interest rates) financial, real estate and speculative sectors, and go overseas to avoid high rent and fringe payments to US labor. The resulting decline of the domestic market and a shrinking base of industrially trained labor reinforce the overseas and speculative movements on US capital. These capitalist structural changes undermined the economic fundamentals underlying the financial sector.

The deterioration of the US economy became apparent as the speculative paper pyramid (sub-prime and credit crises) collapsed during the 2007-08 recession. The recycling of multiple layers of ‘exotic’ financial ‘instruments’ each more precarious than the other, each more divorced from any tangible productive unit in the real economy characterized this period. Their predictable collapse dragged the US into recession. Even among the big banks and financial houses there is no knowledge of the real value of the paper being traded or of the ‘material collateral’ (housing and commercial property being held). The fictitious economy revolves around unloading the devalued paper, to cover costs and lessen losses…and let the next holder of the paper face the risks and uncertainties. As a result there is a total lack of confidence in the market because the ‘objects’ up for sale have become so lacking of value, i.e. so intangible and unrelated to the real economy.

The decline of the real producer basis of goods and social services and the predominance of the paper economy accentuated the divergence between military-directed empire building and the global economic interests of the US. The paper economy is not directly influenced by imperialist militarism, as is the case with US MNC’s with physical assets at risk from imperial wars, armed resistance, the disruption of trade routes, the destruction of overseas markets and the disarticulation of access to minerals and energy sources... http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8841

[AwakeAtLast]

1. Many recs, no kicks

So here ya go!

:hi:

[Cerridwen]

2. Kick. n/t

[Festivito]

3. Personal greed, over market, military or debt imperialism.

And what would our GDP after detracting federal borrowing? NEGATIVE.. repeated and, well, repeated, and ..