In 1953, President Eisenhower made a speech that included the following about U.S. military spending: Every gun
Question:
In 1953, President Eisenhower made a speech that included the following about U.S. military spending:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”
Please explain the basic economic concept that President Eisenhower invoked here. In your answer provide parts of this quote to support your answer. Also, in your answer, explain what Eisenhower meant by saying that the “world of arms is not spending money alone”.
Vector Mechanics for Engineers Statics and Dynamics
ISBN: 978-0073212227
8th Edition
Authors: Ferdinand Beer, E. Russell Johnston, Jr., Elliot Eisenberg, William Clausen, David Mazurek, Phillip Cornwell