The F-35 is an example of the broken window parable[1] writ large. Sure it created a bunch of jobs, but that same money could have created a similar number of jobs while accomplishing something useful. I often wonder what the eventual consequences of this kind of resource misallocation will be for the US.
It's not only about creating jobs or keeping jobs, it's about keeping a current capability of the US industrial complex running. And if you stop it it's like a bakeries oven, when you want to turn it on again it will not be ready in to produce in time for when you need it.
That's another side to projects like the F-35 that people on HN usually don't pay attention to. This programs not only "create" those jobs but they also keep the infrastructure and "machine" running that can design and build this very powerful weapons. The US had air superiority because of its technology for a while and if all that infrastructure and people just start doing something else, in like 5/10 years then the capacity to build this machines is dead, and it would take 10/15 years to get it back up and running.
And another reasons is that dollar is a world-wide reserves currency. This arrangement essentially creates unlimited credit for US. To maintain this status carriers, planes and other weapons are required.
While everyone in US benefits from this, (mostly) liberals disingenuously “protest”. You know, if you really care about this issue, then blue-collar protection policies, like some recent president tried, would go a long way to lift lower middle class and paradoxically reduce a need to project force world-wide all the time.
Well, many influential economists don't believe in the broken windows fallacy, or that it applies here. Joseph Stiglitz has said that he was in favor of literally paying people to dig holes then fill them back up as a form of fiscal stimulus.
The original statement of this idea is from John Maynard Keynes in his General Theory, and turns out to run
> If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well tried principles of Laissez Faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window