On Jun 22, 2007, at 10:47 AM, Jonathan Nitzan wrote:
> The relationship between U.S. military spending as a share of GDP and
> U.S. GDP growth is shown here:
> http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/specials/image0608big/cwfig1_large_html
Maybe this is a short-term observation - an occupational hazard of covering Wall Street - but the relation seems to have broken down after 1990. The military share fell during the Clinton years and growth rose; the reverse has been true in the Bush years. I wonder if this has anything to do with the composition of military spending, which is decreasingly about mass-produced industrial goods (which presumably have a higher multiplier) and increasingly about specialized high-tech gear, R&D, and purchased services (with presumably lower multipliers).
Doug