MIT political scientist Jonathan Caverley, author of Democratic Militarism Voting, Wealth, and War, and himself a US Navy veteran, argues that increasingly high-tech militaries, with all-volunteer armies that sustain fewer casualties in smaller conflicts, combine with rising economic inequality to create perverse incentives that turn the conventional view of war on its head. His research looks at public opinion and military aggressiveness, and concludes that it’s the working class and poor who are more likely to favor military action today. And that bottom-up pressure makes wealthy democracies more aggressive.Rational behavior actually, in terms of cost/benefit. But the headline overstates the case.
BillMoyers.com spoke with Caverley about his research. The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity.
Raw Story
Rising income inequality makes us want to bomb the crap out of everyone: study
Joshua Holland, Moyers & Company
Rising income inequality makes us want to bomb the crap out of everyone: study
Joshua Holland, Moyers & Company
1 comment:
Mike, I love your blog, but I don’t understand why you called attention to this absurd article. Joshua Holland claims that the “US federal government tends to be funded largely from the top 20 percent. 65 percent of the federal government is financed by the wealthy.”
That’s garbage. (No wonder this clown is an MIT professor.) The US government, having monetary sovereignty, finances itself. It creates money out of thin air, simply by crediting bank accounts. That entire article is worthless.
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