6 ms·

"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

by Chinjut 12y ago

"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 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter 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. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953." -Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his "Chance for Peace" speech

sobkas 12y ago
In USA, taking away money from "those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed" is a feature not a bug
- refurb 12y ago
  Yes, that's why a huge proportion of US gov't expenditures are for entitlements. If we're trying our best not to hand out money to citizens, we're doing a pretty bad job.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
slg 12y ago
No one said it was a good or efficient jobs and stimulus program. That however doesn't change the fact that it is a jobs and stimulus program. This is most evident when looking at local politicians when a specific program is potentially being shutdown. They will fight tooth and nail regardless of the strategic necessity of the program just so they can keep the local jobs and money that that program provides.
ceejayoz 12y ago
In general, I agree, but for every destroyer built, how many dock workers wound up being able to buy one of those houses with their salary? It offsets the problem, at least somewhat.
- davmre 12y ago
  That doesn't change the calculus because the offset applies equally to both sides. Suppose you had paid the workers the same amount to build schools instead. They would still be able to buy houses with their salaries, but now there would also be a bunch of nice new schools.
  - mc32 12y ago
    I think the problem is we need to reach world stability. Look at Europe and Japan --economies which had invested relatively little into militaries, they are both reconsidering their previous position due to mainly two factors, the US disengaging, relatively speaking, and a perceived (and by perceived i don't mean imagined) threat from strengthening militaries in Russia and China, which given Europe and Japans previous dependence on the US left them in a era position to respond to growing threats.
    - jdmichal 12y ago
      This hits on honestly the only regret I have with the recent military history of the US. I don't mind that we spend $150 million on "warp speed death machines". I do mind that we spend some of that in the name of protecting countries which are perfectly capable of protecting themselves. Assisting allied forces with our own is fine; replacing them is not.
      - refurb 12y ago
        It all comes down to the benefits. Spending money supporting Europe militarily is better than the alternative.
- lazaroclapp 12y ago
jgon 12y ago
If you really want to blow your mind/weep uncontrollably a little bit of math is just the ticket. The F-22 costs $150,000,000 per plane [1]. The price of a bushel of wheat is $6.52 [2]. This means that a single F-22 costs ~23,006,134 bushels of wheat. A bushel of wheat can produce ~100 loaves of bread weighing 1.5lbs each [3], meaning that each F-22 costs ~2,300,613,496 loaves of bread. The US military has built 187 F-22 planes [1], meaning that it has exchanged the ability to create 430,214,723,926 loaves of bread for a warp speed death machine. Put another way, the US military could provide a loaf of bread to every man, woman, and child on this planet(!) once per week for 62 weeks for the same price as its fleet of F-22s. The next time someone talks about world hunger as some sort of intractable problem, just remember that we are actively choosing to allow people to starve and die in order to build ever more efficient death machines. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor [2] - http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=wheat http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=wheat [3] - http://www.answers.com/Q/How_much_bread_can_be_made_from_a_bushel_of_wheat http://www.answers.com/Q/How_much_bread_can_be_made_from_a_b...
- Evolved 12y ago
  I understand the point you're trying to make but unfortunately it isn't an accurate comparison. However, I do think you've got something here because I question whether building F-22s at $150mil per plane plus the costs of armament exceeds the cost of feeding and arming the populaces as well as training them to defend themselves against groups like the Taliban and ISIS. I would also add in the nominal (it isn't expensive to educate people) cost of education on religions and basic human rights to help prevent the spread of radicalization. I'd wager that it is far less expensive to do this than to build planes to attack an enemy where the costs of these planes is not conducive at all to the value of destroying this enemy and obliterating any progress towards paying off our debt.
  - jgon 12y ago
    Thank you for the reply. Although my last sentence was probably unnecessarily combative, I hope that people reading this don't get hung up on that, how exact the math is, or how much nutrition a loaf of bread can truly provide. I mean I just looked at the cost of building the active fleet. Wikipedia estimates the total costs of the program as being roughly 4x that cost, so even taking into account the costs of a loaf of bread beyond wheat I bet that feeding the planet (with bread) for a year is still pretty close to the cost of the program. You got what I was hoping people would take away, which is that we look at groups around the world being radicalized, turning to oppressive religion and wonder "why? what makes them do that?", and maybe one piece of the puzzle would be asking what sort of reaction these people would have if we gave everyone in their nation food for a year instead of taking a large portion of the world's total resources and expending it on war machines which we then use in their homeland.
Chinjut 12y ago
A certain pedantry forces me to point out: Listening to the speech at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzNbfa1QyYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzNbfa1QyYg, I find there are two discrepancies from this transcript: "fighter" should read "fighter plane", and "This, I repeat, is" should read "This is, I repeat,". My apologies. At last, the record is set straight!

by Chinjut 12y ago

sobkas 12y ago

In USA, taking away money from "those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed" is a feature not a bug

refurb 12y ago
Yes, that's why a huge proportion of US gov't expenditures are for entitlements. If we're trying our best not to hand out money to citizens, we're doing a pretty bad job.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

slg 12y ago

No one said it was a good or efficient jobs and stimulus program. That however doesn't change the fact that it is a jobs and stimulus program. This is most evident when looking at local politicians when a specific program is potentially being shutdown. They will fight tooth and nail regardless of the strategic necessity of the program just so they can keep the local jobs and money that that program provides.

ceejayoz 12y ago

In general, I agree, but for every destroyer built, how many dock workers wound up being able to buy one of those houses with their salary? It offsets the problem, at least somewhat.

davmre 12y ago
That doesn't change the calculus because the offset applies equally to both sides. Suppose you had paid the workers the same amount to build schools instead. They would still be able to buy houses with their salaries, but now there would also be a bunch of nice new schools.
- mc32 12y ago
  I think the problem is we need to reach world stability. Look at Europe and Japan --economies which had invested relatively little into militaries, they are both reconsidering their previous position due to mainly two factors, the US disengaging, relatively speaking, and a perceived (and by perceived i don't mean imagined) threat from strengthening militaries in Russia and China, which given Europe and Japans previous dependence on the US left them in a era position to respond to growing threats.
  - jdmichal 12y ago
    This hits on honestly the only regret I have with the recent military history of the US. I don't mind that we spend $150 million on "warp speed death machines". I do mind that we spend some of that in the name of protecting countries which are perfectly capable of protecting themselves. Assisting allied forces with our own is fine; replacing them is not.
    - refurb 12y ago
      It all comes down to the benefits. Spending money supporting Europe militarily is better than the alternative.
lazaroclapp 12y ago

jgon 12y ago

If you really want to blow your mind/weep uncontrollably a little bit of math is just the ticket. The F-22 costs $150,000,000 per plane [1]. The price of a bushel of wheat is $6.52 [2]. This means that a single F-22 costs ~23,006,134 bushels of wheat. A bushel of wheat can produce ~100 loaves of bread weighing 1.5lbs each [3], meaning that each F-22 costs ~2,300,613,496 loaves of bread. The US military has built 187 F-22 planes [1], meaning that it has exchanged the ability to create 430,214,723,926 loaves of bread for a warp speed death machine. Put another way, the US military could provide a loaf of bread to every man, woman, and child on this planet(!) once per week for 62 weeks for the same price as its fleet of F-22s. The next time someone talks about world hunger as some sort of intractable problem, just remember that we are actively choosing to allow people to starve and die in order to build ever more efficient death machines. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor [2] - http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=wheat http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=wheat [3] - http://www.answers.com/Q/How_much_bread_can_be_made_from_a_bushel_of_wheat http://www.answers.com/Q/How_much_bread_can_be_made_from_a_b...

Evolved 12y ago
I understand the point you're trying to make but unfortunately it isn't an accurate comparison. However, I do think you've got something here because I question whether building F-22s at $150mil per plane plus the costs of armament exceeds the cost of feeding and arming the populaces as well as training them to defend themselves against groups like the Taliban and ISIS. I would also add in the nominal (it isn't expensive to educate people) cost of education on religions and basic human rights to help prevent the spread of radicalization. I'd wager that it is far less expensive to do this than to build planes to attack an enemy where the costs of these planes is not conducive at all to the value of destroying this enemy and obliterating any progress towards paying off our debt.
- jgon 12y ago
  Thank you for the reply. Although my last sentence was probably unnecessarily combative, I hope that people reading this don't get hung up on that, how exact the math is, or how much nutrition a loaf of bread can truly provide. I mean I just looked at the cost of building the active fleet. Wikipedia estimates the total costs of the program as being roughly 4x that cost, so even taking into account the costs of a loaf of bread beyond wheat I bet that feeding the planet (with bread) for a year is still pretty close to the cost of the program. You got what I was hoping people would take away, which is that we look at groups around the world being radicalized, turning to oppressive religion and wonder "why? what makes them do that?", and maybe one piece of the puzzle would be asking what sort of reaction these people would have if we gave everyone in their nation food for a year instead of taking a large portion of the world's total resources and expending it on war machines which we then use in their homeland.

Chinjut 12y ago

A certain pedantry forces me to point out: Listening to the speech at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzNbfa1QyYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzNbfa1QyYg, I find there are two discrepancies from this transcript: "fighter" should read "fighter plane", and "This, I repeat, is" should read "This is, I repeat,". My apologies. At last, the record is set straight!