Economists at the Political Economy Research Institute compared the impact of the government spending $1 billion on the military versus other things like eduation, clean energy and health care. Their findings: Our conclusion in assessing such relative employment impacts is straightforward: $1 billion spent on each of the domestic spending priorities will create substantially more jobs within the U.S. economy than would the same $1 billion spent on the military. We then examine the pay level of jobs created through these alternative spending priorities and assess the overall welfare impacts of the alternative employment outcomes. We show that investments in clean energy, health care and education create a much larger number of jobs across all pay ranges, including mid-range jobs (paying between $32,000 and $64,000) and high-paying jobs (paying over $64,000). Channeling funds into clean energy, health care and education in an effective way will therefore create significantly greater opportunities for decent employment throughout the U.S. economy than spending the same amount of funds with the military. In other words, spending on social programs not only creates more jobs, but better-paying ones, which also creates positive ripples throughout the economy. Health care and energy conservation create 50% more jobs than military spending; education creates about twice as much, or 100% more. peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/published_study/PERI_military_spending_2011.pdf
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 23:37:56 +0000
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