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2 de septiembre de 2017

Material Causes of the crisis

If it is to do some analysis  to understand the underlying causes  that have led to the economic phenomenon that we have before our eyes it is necessary to go back at the end of World War II because it is where a decisive line is marked. While Europe and Japan were devastated by the war, the United States did not receive any direct attack and therefore all its industrial power remained intact. 

The material causes of the crisis
This gave great advantage and so in less than five years became the  world power . The Great Depression had lived in the thirties was only surpassed by the boom in the production of military weapons and their sale and supply countries at war. As a war allowed  US become the world 'sleading economic powers, another war, Iraq, he plunged in darkness, if we consider that this was a superior cost a trillion dollars a year. Who has ended up paying this waste?

After World War II, and with the advent of peace and demobilization, there was a dominant fear to return the Great Depression, that terrible ghost who had lived in the late 20s and early 30. During 1949, and a new world geopolitics,  the US  tried to prepare a basic strategy for the emerging cold war. The result was the Report of the National Security Council 68 ( NSC-68 ) drafted under the supervision of  Paul NitzeTeam member Economic Policy and Planning Department of State. Dated April 14, 1950, and signed by President Harry S. Truman on September 30, 1950, he established the basic public economic policies that  the US  continued toapply for almost 60 years.

This document clamored for a "price reduction strategy to sow the seeds of destruction within the Soviet system, so that that regime collapse from its own entrails." Recommended by the document NSC-68 to keep prices stable policy would require "sacrifice and discipline" within the country, ie large military expenditures and severe restrictions turn in social spending. It would also be necessary to end the "excessive tolerance" that allowed some degree of internal dissension.In its reference to policy planning a secret report by  George Kennan , Paul Nitze predecessor, he stated:

We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 3% of the population ... In this situation we can not avoid being the object of envy and resentment. The really important task for the coming period is to model relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of inequality. To achieve this we have to dispense with all sentimentality and utopias; our attention must focus on our immediate national interests. We should stop talking about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, increased quality of life, and democratization.

Following the same line, in a brief speech addressed to US ambassadors in Latin America in 1950, Kennan noted that one of the main objectives of American foreign policy should be "protection of our raw materials" (of course referring to natural resources Latin America) "we must fight the dangerous heresy , which, as reported by US intelligence was spreading throughout Latin America, that  a government is responsible for the welfare of its citizens ".

As he noted by the Secretary of State for  Woodrow Wilson 30 years earlier, the true meaning of Monroe (America for the Americans) doctrine was that " the United States consider their true interests. The integrity of other American nations is purely accidental, not an end in itself ".Wilson, the great apostle of self - determination, said that argument was unanswerable, even if it was  impolitic to  present it in public.

In his 1970 book  Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War , industrial engineer  Seymour Melman  says that  "the armaments industry with its spending thousands of dollars is dismantling the consumer goods industry". Book Melman, today considered prophetic, says part of his job after an inventory conducted in 1968 found that 70% of the machines and tools for working on metals used in industry  US had ten years or more, the maximum age of use for this type of equipment (drills, lathes, etc.). This means that the inventory of machinery and tool  USA It is the oldest of all major industrial nations, and marks the continuation of a deterioration process that began with the end of the Second World War.This deterioration at the base of the industrial system certifies the continuous debilitating and exhausting effect it has had military use of capital and research and development talent in which he was the first world power.

About the rescue of this work of Melman,  Thomas WoodsHe wrote in September 2007: "According to the Department of Defense, during the four decades of 1947-1987 7.62 trillion resources used in weapons. In 1985, the Commerce Department estimated the value of the machinery and equipment of the nation, and infrastructure at 7.29 trillion. In other words, the amount spent over that period could have doubled the American capital stock or modernized and replaced its existing inventory. "

"That we have not modernized or replaced our assets well is one of the main reasons why, on reaching the Century  XXI , our manufacturing base has evaporated , " Melman concluded.

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This article was published in January 2008. View original article

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