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# What’s the point?
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/whats-the-point-20060502/
- Published: 2006-05-02T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T23:57:34.000Z
- Author: David Pisarra
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

The latest figures have shown consumer confidence in the economy is again on the rebound. Consumer spending is up.6 percent. Construction of new homes is up.

The cost of the war, though in the billions of dollars and thousands of lives, is helping to drive this economy. It is a sad reality that the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and on terror, drugs, and the continued escalation of tensions with South Korea, Iran and the rest of globe, are all contributing to a growing economy.

War is horrible. It is a blight on humanity that any thinking man would gladly remove. Unfortunately, war also brings with it huge needs for food, clothing, machinery, and support services that drive small businesses to growth and prosperity.

The Democrats like to talk about the huge cost of war, and in doing so, they like to paint a picture of spending-crazed Republicans, those bloodthirsty war hawks, who are interested solely in the conquest of other countries, decimation of other cultures, and pursuit of the almighty lobbying dollar.

The Republicans like to cast the Democrats as spineless do-gooders willing to tax the rich, defend the poor and abandon all morality.

As with all things, the middle ground holds the key to what is really going on. It is not the bloodthirsty Republicans that are generating new jobs and incomes, it is the infrastructure of the military that needs constant support that leads to purchase orders that drive the entrepreneurs and industrial enterprises. Those centers of commerce that take money from the government, in exchange for canned food, socks, guns, bullets, computer software and a million other items are what are helping to keep this economy thriving: The employer who works for the government, paying employees so they can shop in a local mega-mart, buying produce picked by illegal immigrants, to feed to their hungry families.

It is an economic moebius strip. Those magical creations that appear to have two sides, but really have only one, because it all feeds back into itself. The economy, war, politics, humanity, right, wrong, honest, dishonest — it all feeds upon itself to keep the global society going.

I attended “All My Sons” this past weekend at the Geffen Theater. It is Arthur Miller’s play about morality in a post World War II world. The play revolves around a contractor who built engine blocks for the Army in WWII. It is timely and poignant about what war does to men, women, children, enterprises and lives.

At the break, my partner and I started to discuss how the current war is affecting our country. We discussed how it seems like the current war is not benefiting our economy, by which I mean the local Los Angeles economy. However, in reality it affects it greatly.

During times of war, people want to escape reality. As Angelenos, we tend to be removed from the war. Since we don’t live in a city that has a major military base in it we tend not to see the military personnel. In WWII, Santa Monica had sailors running everywhere, and defense contractors were all over the city building planes and parts for the fight against a clear enemy.

Today we have Internet companies, lawyers and retail stores — all pursuing the fight for profits and freedom from the City Council’s restrictions on all types of enterprises. Our economy is primarily based on entertainment and tourists.

The high prices that gas is commanding this summer will severely impact the tourism trade but sadly the war in Iraq, the tension over Iran, and the uncertainty of what South Korea will do will continue to keep people motivated to escape reality. And that is positive news for the movie business.

Last year cinemas had a disastrous summer. Attendance was down, partly due to a poor selection of movies, but also because people are staying home to watch movies, which helps the DVD market, the pay-per-view market, and cable providers.

This year, with the continued anxiety of war on everyone’s mind, high gas prices, which will soon become high electric bills as the summer heat drives up our air conditioning costs, people are more likely to attend movies, or at least continue to rent them on DVD and watch them at home.

That is good news for homeowners because it means that the studios will need to create more content, which means more high-paying jobs are coming to the area, which drives up apartment and condominium sales, which puts pressure on the single-family home values to keep increasing. This in turn results in high property taxes which is good for the state as we are still not out of the woods economically.

The cost of war needs to be measured in two ways. There is the human cost in terms of lives lost, destroyed and forever changed. That is beyond accounting. No one could ever tally the true cost in that manner. Then there is the cost and benefits of war in terms of how it drives our economy and the benefits that flow from it. War creates income streams, new inventions, supports depressed areas with new manufacturing opportunities and that provides millions of Americans with sustenance.

War is horrid. It should be avoided. But to avoid it we must first understand it in all its effects. At the end of the day, war is good for an economy, and we need to recognize that. For how else can we avoid wars, if we don’t see what causes them? (David Pisarra is a partner in the Santa Monica law firm of Pisarra & Grist specializing in business development. He (310) 664-9969.)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 2, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/050206.pdf?ref=smdp.com)