© Agence France-Presse/Getty Images/Justin Sullivan
A protestor holds a sign during a demonstration against unemployment benefit cuts on July 11, 2012 in Oakland, California.
A protestor holds a sign during a demonstration against unemployment benefit cuts on July 11, 2012 in Oakland, California.
Comment: Anyone with a neuron firing knows that US Defense spending will never be cut. How else would it fund its never-ending wars? 2 million Americans may very well lose their jobs but it won't be from Defense cuts.
The Aerospace Industries Association released the findings of a report on Tuesday that suggest that the automatic cuts in federal spending slated to kick in on January 2 have the potential of being far more damaging than imagined.
The author of the report, Dr. Stephen Fuller of George Mason University and Chmura Economics and Analytics, suggests that while the Obama administration-endorsed sequestration goes about as scheduled, more than 2 million Americans will see their jobs eradicated in just 2013.
"If they are allowed to occur as currently scheduled, the long-term consequences will permanently alter the course of the U.S. economy's performance, changing its competitive position in the global economy," the report warns.
The expected cuts are touted as a necessary means to adjust the country's growing deficit by way of decreasing Defense Department spending. This latest analysis reveals, however, that it isn't just those with direct ties to the Pentagon who will be jobless. While the future of the Aerospace Industries Association - a trade group with close ties with the Pentagon - is obviously at stake, Dr. Fuller's report says that it will be more than just military men and women made jobless by the cuts. In addition to lay offs coming to defense contractors and others with close DoD ties, the study suggests that as many as 600,000 federal workers will lose their jobs.
Dr. Fuller adds that the automatic cuts, if triggered next year, could cause the US to see it's gross domestic product drop by $215 billion in 2013, in turn plummeting consumer confidence and perhaps paving the way for years of irreversible damage.
As the Associated Press reports, however, the federal government has not outlined specifics of the sequestration plan, suggesting that there is indeed some degree of uncertainty in the AIA released report. Later this week, the US House of Representatives is expected to vote on a measure that, if passed, could force President Barack Obama to put forth specific details about where the cuts will occur.
"The federal agencies haven't said what they would cut back," Dr. Fuller tells the AP. "They don't have too many choices because most of their budget is payroll, where the Defense Department has more choices because most of its budget isn't payroll."
And doing those things should result in at least a moderately livable life. I don't know if we all see clearly how insane this whole situation is.
Have you watched technocrats like Bernanke of Geithner talk about these issues on news shows or in front of Congress?
It is enough to make one sick. They might even be smart enough to have some GOOD handlings for the situation. But if they are, they are too scared to voice them.
We need to begin to disagree in a much more forceful way with the way these guys think.
It's not just a question of the survival level of individuals. The experiences of those individuals add together into the experience of a whole nation; a whole society. And if too many people are worried or idle, it will show up in that society as a weakness, or even a sickness. And if that society then gets hit by a natural (lord I hope it's natural!) disaster (like this drought) it could begin to really cave in, as it is beginning to do. And then some new authoritarian system will sweep in and take it over. And the nation or the society will be too weak or sick to resist that takeover.
These stories are written all over our history books. Do we want to watch this happen (again) in our own country? In our own neighborhoods?
At this point, the situation seems beyond the stage where protest will prove useful. Exposure of criminal practices, yes. Protest, no. There is no one there to respond to the protest. They have long ago caved in, or we wouldn't be seeing this happen again in our country.
We have to start to think in terms of rebuilding; of starting over. At first, the smaller communities where people know each other will probably be best at this.
In the urban areas, there may be some bigger corporations that decide to distance themselves from the whole decadent game and recreate themselves. If something like that doesn't happen, the cities could become very uncomfortable places to live.
People need things to do. We can't just let them rot while the technocrats figure out how to do something without upsetting anyone. The people will support whatever system walks in (or that they create themselves) that puts them back to work.