WWII, The Broken Window Fallacy and Tyler Cowen

Sadly, it is not just intellectual deficients like Paul Krugman making this case. In a new op-ed in the New York Times, Tyler Cowen of George Mason University argues that technological advances from nuclear research to rocketry to internet and robotics have all been spurred by defense spending, and thus war or threats of war are necessary to continue the advance of civilization.

And, we might add, there's a double-fallacy to the broken window fallacy which is clear now (after 40 years of supply-side economics): that the money spent on replacing broken windows (conflict) is not being saved either (Bastiat observed the money was not being spent elsewhere). That means you don't have capital formation, which one would think is critical to maintaining the prosperity that permits a country the luxury of elective war in the first place.