Military Keynesianism

Military Keynesianism is the concept that government spending in the specific form of military expenditures stimulates economic growth, although only of a particular sort. It is a modification of Keynes’s original thesis that government spending could be used to regulate the business cycle, especially by counteracting low demand during economic downturns. Where there have been business, ideological, and other forms of opposition to this more active, interventionist role of government in managing the economy, military spending has served as a more acceptable substitute that does not conjure up the same fears among conservative opinion. This entry explores this concept in depth and also discusses how historical and modern economists have come increasingly to question the concept. In the original Keynesian economic formula, all government spending ...