Contemporary Connections: Hansel and Gretel

Guns or Butter: 

The Covert Role of Government Apathy and Institutionalized War in Hunger

      Our tale of Hansel and Gretel begins set in a time with a society ravaged by war. As is a true comparison to reality the low income sector of society is most easily susceptible to be negatively affected by the war... Low income sectors generally rely on resources depreciate at high rates. They are most dependent small amounts of income, existing acquired resources (housing, land), and their environment. During the time period H+G is set the "environment" can be defined as the literal space on earth they exist in and provides for them, therefore, the land around them and its animal, plant, and resource production possibility. In the Neil Gaiman and Lorenzo Mattotti version of Hansel and Gretel this is described as:

"Hansel and Gretel did not go to school, for schools were far away from the forest where they lived, and schools cost money, which the woodcutter did not have enough of... Hansel and Gretel thought nothing of it, as long as they could play in the forest... as long as there was freshly baked bread and eggs and cooked cabbage on their table. When wood sold well, their father would buy meat... there were rabbits in the forest... ducks [in the pond]... and chickens [out back]. There was always food " (9).

     This exemplifies the fragile state in which the working poor exist. The Woodcutter and his wife could only produce from the few resources they had around them. War was a factor outside the country dwellers control but ravaged their resources:

"War came, and soldiers came with it-hungry angry, bored, scared men who, as they passed through, stole the cabbages, chickens, and ducks. The woodcutters family was never certain who was fighting whom, nor why they were righting, nor what they were fighting about... barely fields became battlefields, and the farmers were killed,... the miller had no grain to mill to flour, the butcher had no animals..., and soon the only thing to eat to their fill, in those fields, were slugs" (13).

     At this time, however, charity and welfare were almost nonexistent. In modern society the "environment" can be used to describe the resources that can be obtained to the structure of the political society we live in. Since 1935 after the Great Depression a welfare system was put into place. 

     In contemporary society many people define social programs as "Entitlement Programs" and define them as the reason for our countries debt. They say helping the poor out of situations such as the story of H+G is the blight of out economic debt and should be considered sinful and contradictory to progress as a nation.

     However as shown in the graph this is a confusing accusation when THE TOTALITY OF ALL OTHER SPENDING is still dwarfed by the military budget in the United States.

The majority of US spending is on the Military-Industrial Complex

     There are many who say the defense spending of the United States is "normal" and "necessary for security"...

United States spending is exponentially greater than any other countries, in fact THE TOP 10 OTHERS COMBINED.

IN FACT, THE UNITED STATES HAS BEEN IN PERPETUAL WAR SINCE OUR FORMATION...

(Source)

David Horsey - Cartoonist - (LA Times Collection)
     In the 2012 Presidential Race Republican candidate Mitt Romney became a laughable example of blaming government spending for public broadcasting ($445 million or 0.014% of the budget)  as a reason for deficit and naming it as one of many programs he would eliminate to "balance the budget".

 (Source) (Ave # Text Files / Gig = 64,872) therefore you would have to delete more than 50,000  9 page papers (must be taking a lot of credits this semester...) to make room for 1 Gig of a 500 gig hard drive (infinitesimally negligible in terms of space) (Source).

However, he plans on increasing military spending by a figure of "4% would mean an increase of around $100 billion dollars in defense spending in 2013" (Source).

     Some simple math (445million/1billion) x 100 = 44.5 % more money to be spent on the military under Romney in comparison to the total budget for ALL public broadcasting systems. 

Cost Of Military Jet Could House Every Homeless Person In U.S. With $600,000 Home

"The staggering fact, configured by Think Progress, is just one of several figures the news source put into perspective for taxpayers. For example, the amount spent per year to build the F-35 jets could easily fulfill a $16.7 billion request by the United Nations Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs to save countless lives from preventable causes around the world — and then have enough left over to fund UNICEF's budget request, too. The full cost of the jets program could also fund the National School Lunch Program, which feeds about 31 million students annually, for the next 24 years."

 "Eisenhower on the Military Industrial Complex and the future of America in his Farewell Address"

"The Military Industrial Complex from Eisenhower to Obama" Gareth Porter (Credentials)

Representation of the flow of resources in the military industrial complex.

With this in mind... does it really seem like "SOCIAL PROGRAMS" are the reason the United States is experiencing debt issues? ....

Connecting class themes....

     Keeping this information at mind let's return to thinking about Hansel and Gretel. 

     Their society is a prime example of one that invested no money in social programs (obviously no welfare), education (no easy access or public schools "cost money"), healthcare (assuming no access to the prior two access to this is logically assumable to be absent), public broadcasting (they didn't even know why the war was being fought), adoption or state care programs (people ditching children in woods to survive), or in their people at all. Their government was purely focused on the profits for themselves and the industries that support those means. 

    Imagine then, if our society abruptly ended funding to all social programs much like politicians like Mitt Romney suggest... 

     How would it affect us? Well, for starters, the prices of all goods would skyrocket. Government involvement in industry subsidies, a common mute point considering its government private investment rather than public, balancing private activity ends and without this the cost for producers would skyrocket and therefore consumer burden, and therefore price, would skyrocket. These industries would lay off workers, increasing unemployment and poverty rates exponentially. Some industries would topple all-together. While the government would "save" money, it would be potentially catastrophic to the work force of America. In turn without taxes generated from said work force and their capital (ie. property/income taxes) the government would run out of money for their other programs... Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue? 

PEOPLE WOULD BE EATING CHILDREN, PEOPLE WOULD BE PILLAGING TOWNS, DITCHING THEIR CHILDREN IN FORESTS, PEOPLE WOULD TOPPLE THE POWER STRUCTURES BOTH PHYSICAL AND MORAL THAT EXIST BUT IT WOULD OCCUR IN A MORBIDLY DE-CONSTRUCTIVE WAY...

MAKING CONNECTIONS

1. What is your opinion on this topic?
1. Do you think society is better or worse off due to government involvement in personal economics? Ex) Taxes.
1. Comparing a individual household "feudal" society to an interconnected both locally and globally modern society.
1. Can individuals and society be modernly successful with an economically isolationist mentality? Ex) Can you obtain every modern convenience you enjoy through the power of you and your community alone (think broadly in terms of production of all goods needed food, clothing, housing, entertainment such as the computer I type on, medicine, etc...)
2. Can the destabilization of the structure of a just and moral society be seen in low income areas today?
1. Crime rates, % population incarcerated, education rates, suicide rates, income elevation rates, access to heath care, access to a healthy diet, access to economic opportunity, teen pregnancy rates, drug abuse rates, access to safe housing, access to livable wages, % low income people participating in military activity.
2. Interactions with these communities and power structures ie. government, police, military, industrial.
3. What should publicly generated tax money be spent on?
1. Are you a "guns" or "butter" economic person?
2. Is it normal to spend 57% of your total budget on military spending?
1. What role does story playing tell in the continuation of this society? Are we being truthful in the narrative presented and the actualization of our embodied ideal (capitalism, militarism...) to "the land of the prosperous and free"?
1. Why are these politicians so quick to blame the poor over inflated militarism?
1. WHO BENEFITS FROM WAR?
1. Is this an embodiment of our theme as Americans of "the land of prosperity" and "the home of the free"?
2. How is society used in terms of bodies to accomplish this goal? Are we being used to accomplish this goal?
3. What are the consequences of a militarized society to the people existing in that society and in the societies the conflict takes place in?
1. Does investing in military power have a return for the group of individuals ie. taxpayers that invest in it? 
1. What do they receive?
2. Is this proportionate the moral consequences of war?
1. What is more important economic or societal moral expansion and progression?
2. Thinking long term which offers a greater return... investing in communities or war
4. If the government of Hansel and Gretel invested in the people instead of focusing all resources on war would the story be the same?

ALL IN ALL...

1. What can we learn as a society from this tale?
1. Is the complete reduction of public resource a "healthy" decision for our economy? 

Nath Paresh - Cartoonist