Recently, Record-Bee readers were exposed to two populist, yet erroneous slogans: the middle class is shrinking and the US is a military/industrial complex.
No demographic data exist anywhere to suggest any diminishing of the middle class. Poverty rates have remained constant for 40 years. If any middle class shrinkage occurred in the 80s and 90s, it was due to a few households moving from the middle class into the wealthiest quintile.
When President Eisenhower issued the “military/industrial complex” caveat in the 1950s, defense spending was 60 percent of the federal budget.
Presently, military spending constitutes 18 percent of federal expenditures. Seventy percent of that spending is for labor costs (e.g., paychecks for soldiers, sailors and Defense Department civilian employees).
At the height of the Reagan presidency, the defense budget was at 25 percent. Significant defense cutbacks occurred after the conclusion of the Cold War, of which the West Coast was hit hard with numerous base closures.
In fact, sloganeering now exists on the other side of the aisle, since social spending (Social Security, Medicare and other income protection programs) receive 60 percent of the federal budget. Some are more concerned about the dangers of the “Welfare State,” but that”s another debate.
Objective data may pose inconvenient truths for those sincerely seeking answers to complex questions, but are rarely an antidote to a closed mind.
Pat Nunes
Soda Bay
