F-35 jets aren’t a good buy

Edmund Pries, TheRecord.com:

The $16-billion F-35 fighter jet purchase has been a tough sell from day one.

When some analysts decried the purchase as wholly unsuitable for Canada’s domestic and military needs, and a skeptical public balked at the price tag, the government refocused its marketing and began touting the importance of the F-35 purchase for creating jobs – some of them even in Canada. This message now dominates.

A 2007 study by Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier of the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) and the Political Economy Research Institute, titled The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities, indicates that for every $1 billion of investment per sector, each sector would create the following number of jobs (Canadian figures would obviously vary, but likely not by much):

• Military/Defence: 8,555

• Health care: 12,883

• Education: 17,687

• Mass transit: 19,795

• Home weatherization/infrastructure construction: 12,804

Clearly, investment in the military or defence sector is the least effective when compared to other sectors for results in job creation per unit of dollars invested. The F-35 fighter is, therefore, a rather poor job creation instrument. If the government’s goal truly is job creation, it would do better to invest in domestic sectors that improve the lives of its citizens and create more jobs at the same time — and reconsider whether to proceed with the purchase of the F-35 fighter or even its much heralded increases in annual military spending.

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