Dear Editor: Recently a group of Wisconsin leaders gathered to celebrate the start of construction on the USS Wisconsin nuclear submarine. This weapon of mass destruction cost over $9 billion.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is cutting climate change funding by over $9 billion, reducing Medicaid funding by over $1 trillion in the next decade, and making dramatic reductions in funding for education. This calls for mourning, not celebration.
This project does generate some jobs, of course, but studies by Heidi Garrett-Peltier and Robert Pollin (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) show that military spending is a very expensive way to generate jobs. Peltier states, “We find that while $1 billion creates 11,200 military-related jobs … the same level of spending creates … 16,800 jobs in clean energy, 17,200 jobs in health care, and 26,700 jobs in education…