The line was down yesterday -- that is good, perhaps a sign that jobs (though not middle income jobs) are coming back. I have read some reports that indicate that remodeling of personal homes have gone up. But I also have a sense that the numbers have gone down because the amount of food has gone radically down -- and one-third of what we used to give. This is the only state-financed distribution that we have. The program supposedly has been cut, and San Diego food bank has cut what they are distributing to extend the program as long as possible. It is part of the war against the poor sponsored by neoliberalism. Of course, this is also opportunity for the church to stand up and show that the liberal democratic nation state has never provided the "salvific" services it claims as it has taken over the role that the church historically played in western culture.

In light of these cutbacks, it is interesting that I found the following statistics given that we are approaching the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan. The paper, found at http://costsofwar.org/article/economic-cost-summary, shows on non-partisan sources, that the cost of wars in the past decade are over 3.2 to 4 TRILLION dollars and rising. This ignores some long term costs that will get hidden in Medicare and by state and local expenses for the damages done to the soldiers from their involvement in killing, and 5.3 billion dollars promised for reconstruction in Afghanistan.

Of course the killings from the instability continue in Iraq and the lack of stability from the Afghani war still threatens Pakistan. And even young educated struggle to find a middle class wage, while the living standard of the working poor continues to deteriorate.

It is easy to be against; yet as the church we need to find ways of truthfully exposing the lie that the state "saves us" through war, and step into the void through focusing on obeying the teachings of Jesus through our loyalty to him as the church. We need to develop a non-neoliberal economic system that seeks to give jobs and a less extreme income distribution than has emerged out of the neoliberal collective that has ravaged the world in war and economic disparities.