If the debt commission fails, automatic spending cuts will slash defense. A new report, put out by the aerospace industry, claims that such an outcome could cost America a million jobs. Ackerman is unimpressed:
While there’s no doubt that defense cuts will mean job losses, there’s also no doubt that a report prepared for an industry so reliant on defense cash will paint a stark picture of what happens if that cash is threatened. Congressmembers looking to get reelected pay attention, since fighting for defense money as a jobs program is easier than making a case for what a sensible, appropriately funded defense strategy ought to be. That’s the problem with reports like these: They make it easy to ignore structural economic and defense problems and imply that all will be well if the cash keeps flowing.
Dylan Matthews takes a closer look at how much cutting defense would hurt the economy in the short term. Yglesias addressed this issue a couple of weeks ago:
I think our high level of spending on the national security state is very wasteful. We should have many fewer people designing and building military robots and many more working on household and industrial applications. We should have fewer soldiers and more police officers. But the good time to try to shift people out of one sector into another is when unemployment is low.
(Chart: from a Mercatus Center report (pdf))
The Dish 