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by Stranger43 1022 days ago
It's probably not that simple as they could do what the EU does and create those jobs in purely civilian industries.

It's more about the political economy where funneling through certain well connected companies generate a lot of goodwill among the middlemen who then funds pac's and pay for advertisements then it's about a direct relationship between the senate and the employment status of their workers.

1 comments

It is exactly that simple. Closing down a tank factory to build something in another state isn't going to help the representative in that district get elected.
But running that tank factory is probably the least effective way of converting tax dollars into employment.

And thats one senator in one district it takes 50% of both senate and congress to pass a bill and not everytone gets contracts that big assigned to their district so the system is not individual senators all trying to secure the biggest employment gain for their district, it's much less rational.

> But running that tank factory is probably the least effective way of converting tax dollars into employment.

You'd be surprised. See, e.g., steel tariffs costing $900,000 per job saved. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/05/07/trumps-st...

> And thats one senator in one district it takes 50% of both senate and congress to pass a bill and not everytone gets contracts that big assigned to their district so the system is not individual senators all trying to secure the biggest employment gain for their district, it's much less rational.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logrolling