Overview

The question was asked of me, what is the difference between me and other economists.  The Nobel Prize winning Economist Leontiff said it best.  97% of economic articles are articles about other economic articles.  Only 2.5% are economic models, and only 0.5% are basic research.  I'm in the last two categories that only one in thirty three articles are involved in.  So I am an economic engineer, a scientist, not an economist as currently defined.

Numbers or Words

I am governed by the intelligent use of numbers rather than the extensive use of words.  90% of people are numbers phobic; I am among the rare 10% who love numbers.

For those who love words, this is a very good one page summary of the military findings:

https://www.academia.edu/12755188/Military_Domestic_Effects

For lovers of numbers, the best one page summary of my work is this: https://www.academia.edu/4044456/SUMMARY_Military_DisEconomics

Experience of Economics

Economists use numbers and charts a lot, but few of them are very good at it.  They are very good at ad hoc explanations and inductive reasoning.  Even when considering macro topics they are very micro about it.  They insist on building with basics like supply and demand.  Unwittingly, they don't really trust the markets to clear things in such a way that long term principles govern what is happening.  Monetarists insist that a short term stimulus will be "paid for" in a few years with retrenchment.  This ignores the dominant world economy central value of the dollar making the payback cycle irrelevant to modern macroeconomics.  Yes, the US economy can run deficits for many many years without negative consequences.  But the real consequences are not in the money economy, they are in the working people economy.  What you work on is the more important variable.  Thus if you aim the scientists engineers and capital at the real economy you will grow.  If you do this at the military economy you lack any real economic goods output and have to settle for intimidation or destruction or mostly irrelevance for your political output.  Don't be fooled by the inputs to the military industrial complex by the weapons manufacturers, that is not real output, that is used in a process that yields political outcomes not economic goods.  Inputs are not outputs.  This is not me being political, this is how I interpret the unbelievably accurate models that come out of my scientific process.

Study of Economics

One economist, after an unsuccessful run for congress, told a group of moderate Republicans that everyone should have a class or two in economics.  But more than that, and economists get too specialized and can't see the forest for the trees.  Three department heads of leading economic programs have told me some shocking truths about economics.  One called Jay Forrester, the great inventor of system dynamics, a charlatan, for teaching about long cycle economics in the business department of the same institution as the economist.  Another told me that creating a model out of the historical data was cheating.  It would be if your model was the ridiculous econometric modeling process of 50 equations of three or four variables each.  In that I agree.  But if your model has three basic variables and two collapse variables as mine does, you can actually create a model out of historical data much like the standard scientific method of the physicists.  You don't have to turn the scientific method on its head like that economist and reject models built on historical facts.  The third department head, just this year, told me that microeconomics is a good science but macroeconomics is not of much value to the modern economist.  I couldn't agree more about the current state of the art.  But that ignores the transformative nature of my work as an economic engineer.

Favorite Economists

Joseph Stiglitz is my favorite current economist.  Alone among the leading economists of our time, he seems to "get it" about Peace Economics.  He wrote a column for a British newspaper that explained how the nineties settled the dispute once and for all, that lower military spending is good for the economy.  I have seen his explanation of the World War II economy also reflect the understanding that the war economy of that time was limited in its effectiveness.  This contrasts with Paul Krugman, who gives credit to the war economy for bringing America out of the Great Depression in one of his books.  Larry Summers is the worst, immediately attacking Seymour Melman after a speech at MIT.  Seymour Melman had carefully explained how the military economy hurts economic growth of the country, but Larry Summers thought otherwise.  When Obama chose Larry Summers to be his economic advisor, he made a huge mistake.  That mistake probably led to Obama's moving war funding from Iraq to Afghanistan.  Instead, he should have reduced military spending to free up engineers and capital for the recovery.  By mistakenly keeping those key resources in the military, that led to the very slow economic recovery.  Unfortunately, the financial economists argued that the economic recovery was slow because financial recessions are always that way.  This then armed Larry Summers with an excuse for maintaining a high military budget.  Still, as the military budget has retrenched somewhat, the recovery has picked up somewhat.  The record breaking snowfall in New England has hurt the first quarter economy.  As a dry cleaning executive for many years, I noticed the seasonal slumps for the July August summer heat and the January February winter snows.

Military Economists

Seymour Melman was the leading economist against military spending.  His major mistake was putting the blame narrowly on the weapons manufacturers, not recognizing that all of military spending resembles a factory, so we are not just losing assembly line equipment, we also lose blue collar skilled workers.  Democrats make the same mistake, taking the side of the troop funding against weaponry funding.  All of it is an economic loss.

Marion Anderson looked at jobs in the Reagan military buildup, giving a poor explanation for the State of Washington slump in the early eighties.  The correct variable is military spending, not jobs, as capital investment is the lost opportunity cost.

Anne Markusen of Rutgers is good as far as she goes, but lacks the imagination and political side of the process to fully understand the military spending consequences.

Ruth Leger Sivard of  "World Military and Social Expenditures" did the critical work that began my own process, but she did not follow through with the endless tests I used to flesh out the theory in all its detail.

Top Press Release, with 5700 views, about 10 Military Domestic Effects:

https://www.academia.edu/12755188/Military_Domestic_Effects_list_of_10

Current version of the class I have created to teach this ground breaking material:

Cover Letter, Proof of Concept, Nine Areas of Mastery, Creating Model, 31 Class Sessions:

https://www.academia.edu/11786950/FRAMEWORK_For_Academic_Class_six_pages_2015