SALON

Friday, May 11, 2012 1:16 PM UTC

Our guns and butter economy

America has two favorite new exports: Firearms and obesity

By

Topics: U.S. Economy, Guns, Obesity,

Our guns and butter economy (Credit: ChinellatoPhoto via Shutterstock)

With the economy still struggling and the debates over how to fix the problem more intense than ever, one word still evokes bipartisan consensus: exports. “I want us to sell stuff,” said President Obama, summing up the bipartisan sentiment.

That nebulous word “stuff” is significant. It asks us to see all exports as the same and to refrain from making nuanced value judgments about what exactly we’re shipping overseas. In this coldblooded view, a job-creating export is a job-creating export, and that’s as far as any conversation should go.

At first glance, such reductionism seems logical, rational, even boringly uncontroversial. But two recent news items highlight how in a globalized economy, there are troubling consequences that come from the particular kind of export economy we’re building.

The first bit of news came from the Washington Post, which this week reported that “the Obama administration is crafting a proposal that could make it easier to export firearms and other weapons.” Though the Homeland Security and Justice Departments say the new rules could make it easier for terrorist and drug cartels to further arm themselves, the White House is nonetheless citing the “stuff” theory of exports to ignore the objections.

This is part of a larger pattern since President Obama took office. During Obama’s first year in the White House, he began to gut the Pentagon’s approval process for arms exports, weakening controls on what could and could not be sold. Later, diplomatic cables uncovered by WikiLeaks showed, as Fortune magazine put it, “American officials act(ing) as de facto pitchmen for U.S.-made weapons.”

The result is that America has become the true “Lord of War,” as the arms dealer motto goes. We are the leading arms supplier to the developing world and we are responsible for the majority of all weapons sales across the globe. Yes, we are so committed to selling instruments of death to the rest of the planet that military industries have almost tripled their share of the U.S. economy in just a decade.

The second bit of news came from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, whose new study shows that America is exporting our obesity crisis to Mexico. Coupling health statistics with U.S. export data since the North American Free Trade Agreement tore down Mexico’s agriculture trade barriers, researchers found that the Mexican market was flooded by American agribusinesses’ taxpayer subsidized commodities (corn, soybeans) and their processed derivatives. According to the report, that quickly wiped out Mexico’s local food economy, leaving its food system exactly “like the industrialized food system of the United States — characterized by the overabundance of obesogenic foods.” Not surprisingly, Mexican obesity rates have consequently skyrocketed.

Taken together, these export booms represent what could be called America’s new Guns and Butter economy. We are so desperate to export any “stuff” we can, we are now fattening up the world and arming it for permanent bloodshed.

Seeking to short-circuit any objections to this trend, President Obama has said simply that “we’re at a moment where necessity has tempered the old debates” over exports and economic policy. In terms of history, he’s not wrong — during the previous century, America witnessed fevered fights over what constitutes a moral farm policy, and in the 1930s the U.S. Senate’s Nye Committee held almost 100 hearings into “greedy munitions interests” that were unduly influencing public policy. Sadly, Obama is correct – those debates have been silenced.

But should they be? Should we simply say that any exports — no matter their moral, ethical, environmental or health implications — are inherently good? Does “necessity” really mean that “stuff” for stuff’s sake must be the basis of our export economy?

Washington and profit-at-all-cost industries certainly say yes — but that doesn’t mean it’s the right answer.

David Sirota

David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and the best-selling author of the books "Hostile Takeover," "The Uprising" and "Back to Our Future." E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com. More David Sirota.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 25 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Slave descendants seek equal rights from Cherokee Nation
58 points59 points | 3 comments
vote
Oklahoma senator: Tornado aid “totally different” from Sandy aid
40 points41 points | 6 comments
vote
Oklahoma senator who voted against federal funding for Hurricane Sandy victims: Tornado aid “totally different” from Sandy aid
37 points38 points | comment
vote
"Apparently, we have deserving and undeserving disasters, Oklahoma senators James Inhofe and Tom Coburn explain"
28 points29 points | 2 comments
vote
Obama opposes GOP bill on Keystone XL oil pipeline: The White House said Tuesday that the bill “seeks to circumvent longstanding and proven processes” by removing a requirement for a presidential permit. The legislation also says no new environmental studies are needed.
20 points21 points | 2 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations