Pete Hendrickson (@LostHorizons)

Uncle Sam Doesn't Have One Thin Dime For Joe Biden's $106 Billion War Package by David Stockman (with an important afterword by Yours Truly) When you are faced with an existential threat to your very national survival, this is what you do. You mobilize your economy for all-out struggle and impose heavy-duty “War Taxes” to pay for a dramatic build-up of military capabilities. For instance, between 1939 and 1945 Federal government receipts rose nearly seven-fold—from $6 billion to $42 billion per year, owing to across-the-board tax increases that took the average income tax rate from 4% to 24% and the top rate to upwards of 90%. Relative to the national economy, Federal receipts (red bars) rose from 6% of GDP to a peak of nearly 20% in 1945. On top of that came a huge amount of war bonds and borrowing. Accordingly, outlays from taxes and borrowing (blue bars), mostly for military mobilization, rose from less than 10% of GDP in 1940 to a war-time peak of 40% in 1944-1945. Call that America’s national mobilization triggered by Pearl Harbor. It’s what a self-respecting democracy does when its very existence is called into question. Alas, to a man and woman Israel’s leadership has likened the barbaric Hamas attacks of October 7th to Pearl Harbor. And Netanyahu in particular has insisted that Israel’s withering bombardment of Gaza must not give way to a “pause” or ceasefire just as Washington did not stand down after Pearl Harbor, either. Fine. But then again, where is Netanyahu’s powerful “budget speech” to the Knesset akin to FDR’s famous call to arms and economic sacrifice before the Congress in January 1942? Where is Netanyahu’s lobbying campaign for an all-out Israeli economic mobilization and stiff War Taxes that would dramatically increase the government’s claim on the nation’s economic resources? Where is the plan for a true Garrison State with the vastly expanded military budget and armed forces that would be needed in the future to protect Israel’s citizens from being caught flat-footed again? Where are the plans for the hundreds of thousands of additional soldiers that would be required to ensure that the several thousand Hamas barbarians who inhabit the open-air prison on Israel’s southern border never again break through a properly sealed-off, militarized barrier on the perimeter of the Gaza Strip? Of course, there is no such thing in the works. There is a whole lot of lobbying going on—but it’s not in the Knesset. Instead, it’s on behalf of a largely symbolic $14 billion Israel aid package from the war finance capital of the world on the Potomac. Continued: https://losthorizons.com/N/262.htm#4