[Peace-discuss] could there be an estimate of Pentagon spending by census tract?

[Robert Naiman]

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has a tool where you can look up the life
expectancy for your census tract.

https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/interactives/whereyouliveaffectshowlongyoulive.html

The point being to illustrate how life expectancy is correlated with census
tract which is correlated with income which is highly skewed.

Could we do this exercise for Pentagon spending? In the UMass paper they
mapped Pentagon spending to occupational codes which they matched to income
distribution. Could a similar technique map Pentagon spending to census
tracts?

The idea would be to show that Pentagon spending by census tract is
positively correlated with life expectancy by census tract. But that would
not show that Pentagon spending is a good thing. It would show that
Pentagon spending is a form of disinvestment away from the communities with
lower life expectancy, a transfer away from them to communities with higher
life expectancy.

So then you could say to people: go do the RWJ thing. If the life
expectancy in your neighborhood is lower than that of the high Pentagon
spending impact neighborhoods, you're getting ripped off by Pentagon
spending, and there is no prospect that your neighborhood's share of that
military pie is going to increase. So long as that piece of pie you don't
have is part of the military pie, you're not seeing that pie. Your only
chance to get that piece of pie is if it's transferred to the domestic pie.

===

Robert Reuel Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1
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