In his Chance for Peace speech, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched and 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.”
Though spoken at the dawn of the Cold War, Eisenhower’s message is still relevant today. His views on the distribution of federal spending represent the struggle between a nation’s desire to protect its borders and its desire to provide social services to its people. His ideas can be linked to the core tenets of the “Guns and Butter” economic model, made famous by President Lyndon Johnson’s social welfare initiatives of The Great Society during Vietnam.
This model displays the teetering balance between a country’s ability to produce “guns,” which represent military and defense spending, versus “butter,” representing the money that goes into domestic assistance programs and the production of goods. A nation with a finite amount of money and resources has to find a balance between the two, because a rise in “gun” spending forces a decrease in “butter” spending, and vice versa.
The “Guns and Butter” model is, admittedly, a bit simplistic, but it can be used to outline some major problems with the way the United States currently spends its money. Right now, with the thought of a war with Syria hanging in the balance, this issue is more important than ever.
We spent a staggering $682 billion this year on our military and defense budget. The only country that even comes close to our budget is China, yet we still spend four times more than they do. And we spent just over 30 times more than Canada, our friendly neighbors to the north. That is insane.
We are becoming, in effect, the world police. We send our military everywhere, into every country, every time something bad happens. The United States enters into other countries with gusto, shouting about how we’ll fix everything up and then get out, but it never seems to work out that way. The last few wars America has been involved in have dragged on endlessly, costing us billions and billions of dollars. How is that fixing anything?
We don’t have the resources or power to police every warring country. The fate of the entire world cannot be our responsibility, because our home will fall apart if it is. We cannot afford to have military involvement everywhere in the world. We simply can’t.
The United States has a significantly larger military than any other country in the world, yet if we were to significantly cut our defense budget (like in half, for example), we wouldn’t suddenly be under some ominous threat. Almost all of the countries whose military budgets come closest to ours are allies. In terms of safety from the rest of the world, the United States is fine. More than fine.
Where the US is decidedly not fine is a bit closer to home. In 2012, the federal government only spent $103 billion on education and $411 billion on welfare. The welfare budget includes everything from housing and construction to unemployment benefits and food assistance programs. $411 billion sounds like a lot, but sized up next to the defense budget, it appears almost minuscule.
America is, without a doubt, the world’s most powerful and most militarily capable country. The problem is we are not the most powerful or most capable country in almost any other aspect.
To bring this all into a more pop-culture centered realm, did you guys happen to see the opening monologue in the first episode of The Newsroom? If you haven’t, here’s a rundown.
The show opens with Jeff Daniels’ character Will McAvoy in the middle of a debate with a few other politicians. During the Q&A session, a typical college girl asks, “Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?” One of McAvoy’s debate partners answers in typical American politician fashion: “Freedom and freedom. So let’s keep it that way.”
McAvoy, on the other hand, answers with a quite long and impassioned monologue about how America is not the greatest country in the world anymore. His speech boils down to the fact that we are not the best at almost anything except for our military, and you know what? Will McAvoy is right. Our unemployment rate is among the highest in the world, our math and science education is seriously lacking, our prisons are exponentially more full than other countries, our life expectancy is shockingly low, and too many of us can’t afford health insurance.
The World Economic Forum ranks the US 52nd in math and science education. Our high school graduation rate is 77 percent, compared with Germany’s staggering 97 percent. We spend about $8,000 per person on healthcare, which is way more than any other country, all while being one of the only developed countries in the world that does not guarantee healthcare for its citizens. After dishing out the cash for their healthcare, a person working 40 hours a week at a job that pays minimum wage would be lucky to be able to afford food, let alone housing or anything else.
With the hard work, dedication and money we pour into our military, it is feasible that we could divert at least a small portion of it back into our own country and significantly improve the lives of our citizens.
Where would all that extra money go? Food stamps and other assistance programs, education, healthcare, paying off our ever-increasing debt to other countries – the list is practically endless.
All over the country, US citizens are becoming increasingly frustrated with how we spend our money. We cannot keep this up. I know I’m not the only one to say that I’m tired of all the fighting. I’m tired of the wars. It seems that we are constantly at war with somebody, to the point where the word seems to have lost all meaning.
America has a long list of problems, but if we put our focus and energy into helping out our own citizens and funding areas of our government that need it the most, I think we could make a lot of positive changes. We are the most powerful country in the world, and we have the money and the ingenuity to be a real force for good.
Will McAvoy finishes his monologue with a heartwarming sentiment: “America is not the greatest country in the world anymore… but it sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons…” Once again, Mr. McAvoy, I have to agree with you.
We need peace and prosperity, not violence and war. We need butter, not guns.
