Guns Mean Butter

John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, wrote a blog post for The Huffington Post on Tuesday musing about this weekend's gathering in Washington of "tens of thousands of people . . . to push the government on the jobs issue."

Feffer made the point that progressives were making an issue between spending on war versus spending on jobs. But, he wrote, there's a problem with this stance.

Many unions, although perhaps willing to oppose the war in Afghanistan, are hesitant to advocate cutting Pentagon spending. With a base that continues to shrink, they fear losing dues-paying members who manufacture weapons. Politicians, too, don't want to appear anti-job by voting for anything that would close down production lines in their district.

We may not like it, but war is good for jobs, something that economists on the left and right agree on.