Jonathan Askonas — How the Pentagon Budget is a Threat to the Middle Class

While military spending subsidizes a certain lifestyle for some, it also contributes to trends that put the rest of the country at risk.

Excess expenditure over the requirements of purpose is wasteful and constitutes a subsidy.

While the economics of the article is out of paradigm with MMT, the author is a professor of politics and economics is peripheral to his argument.

He doesn't mention the push from the right to increase military spending for "national security" reasons, followed by an argument that the growing deficit requires cutting social spending. That is the most serious threat to the middle class lifestyle. Moreover, diverting real resources to military use beyond reasonable need deprives the domestic economy of those resources.

The American Conservative
How the Pentagon Budget is a Threat to the Middle Class
Jonathan Askonas | Assistant Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America and Fellow at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship