Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Reagan Fucked Up America's Defense Industry

Between "conservative" penchant for outsourcing core military procurement functions and MBA/banksters mania for mergers and shit like that there, our military-inducstrial base has been hollowed out.

Frankly, what they did is nothing short of economic sabotage. The USSR/Russia and China could not have done it better to us if they tried.

Milton Friedman and his doctrine of "shareholder value über alles" was to American industry what Thomas Midgely, Jr. was to the environment.

1 comment:

  1. Shareholders and CEO's first: (https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/06/23/why-cant-america-build-enough-weapons/)

    "Did shareholder value take precedence over Boeing’s traditional safety culture? Over the past decade, the company has returned $59 billion to shareholders in buybacks and dividends. That represents $59 billion less to invest in plants and equipment, research and development, and retaining skilled production workers and engineers by rewarding them with higher pay. Without that reinvestment in infrastructure, Boeing has since its merger increasingly become a final assembler rather than builder of aircraft because it has lost the workforce and facilities to build most of an airframe in-house. It now farms out even major components all over the world to the lowest bidder."

    I Pity the Fool who flys any Boeing air or spacecraft.

    The article is a real eyeopener of our horrible long term state of military readiness.

    ReplyDelete

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