About those poor confused military contractors

by digby

I wrote earlier about how the MIC is threatening to destroy the country if the congress follows through on it’s earlier deal to cut defense. The Senators are all in a dither because the economy will be destroyed if the MIC has to lay off all those workers.(And here I thought the government couldn’t create jobs …)

Guess what? Aside from the issue of all the useless killing machines they produce, defense contracts are the costliest way to create jobs. The PERI institue of UMass issued a report showing that for every $1 billion spent by the Pentagon, roughly 11k jobs are created while that same money on domestic priorities (or even tax cuts) would create far more jobs:

Also too, they are making record profits at the moment and Lockheed’s CEO took home $25.4 million (twice what Goldman’s CEO made) in 2011. Maybe they could hold off on the panic for just a little while.