Just thought this may be of interest to some…a small glimpse into how Israel is part of the mechanism for channeling huge amounts of public money (taxes) into private US companies…and why…war and instability are essential for increasing market share…
“appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013″…(that means….this is where your taxes have already gone)
“SEC. 8069. Of the amounts appropriated in this Act under the heading ‘‘Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense-Wide’’, $948,736,000 shall be for the Israeli Cooperative Programs: Provided, That of this amount, $149,679,000 shall be for the Short Range Ballistic Missile Defense (SRBMD) program”
OK. Basically $150 million for the SRBMD program. So who gets that exactly?
“Boeing announced today an exclusive agreement with Alliant Techsystems to support the new Israeli Short Range Ballistic Missile Defense (SRBMD) program, which Boeing is pursuing with partner Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI).”
Oh…Gigantic American corporations.
The bill stipulates exactly where that $150 million is supposed to go..generally various levels of production within the companies.
The rest of the money is slotted to go to fund projects, such as “Iron Dome” which belong to state-owned defense companies in Israel like Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries. And this is where it starts to get a little convoluted.
Private, and especially state-owned companies are not under pressure to maximize profits and have no shareholders to report to. Publicly traded companies, on the other hand, like Boeing, L-3 Communications, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, are all accountable to shareholders. Shareholders who like ridiculously profitable short term operating margins, and dislike when companies spend money. This is why all of these companies have slashed spending on research & development over the past 15 years or so, even while their revenues have skyrocketed.
Through a variety of ways, the technologies developed by Israeli state-owned companies inevitably get transferred into the private sector. Thus, US funding for defense projects in Israel, carried out by state firms, amounts to a massive subsidy for research & development for American companies, who will inherit the technologies down the road.
Because the US gives hundreds of millions of dollars to Israel to develop war technologies, the big 5 American defense companies can increase their profit margins by cutting back on R&D investment, while still, in fact, developing new products.