Unemployment and Pro-War Sentiments?

By: Andrea Terzi

Have you ever considered full employment as a means to properly measure the cost of wars? Tolerating unemployment may indeed lead to pro-war sentiments.  Fighting wars requires using resources to produce weapons, feed soldiers, provide transportation. Thus, maintaining chronic unemployment is a powerful economic incentive for war. In a fully-employed economy, i.e., an economy where a full employment goal is constantly and successfully pursued, the need of resources for a war would compete with other demands on resources. War would inevitably entail a reduction of the standard of living. In a fully-employed economy, war costs become explicit and they can better be weighted in with any alleged benefits of fighting.