President Dwight D Eisenhower's own objections to the expansion and endless warfare of the military-industrial complex. In his "Chance For Peace" speech in 1953, he referred to this very trade-off, giving specific examples: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. This is, I repeat, 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. ... Is there no other way the world may live? See also Opportunity cost Peace dividend, the amount of civilian goods produced by a decrease in defense spending. Revealed preferences Scarcity References Further reading Carlton-Ford, Steve. 2009. Major Armed Conflicts, Militarization, and Life Chances: Pooled Time-Series Analysis. Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 36, No. 5. Heo, Uk and Sung Deuk Hahm. 2006. Politics, Economics, and Defense Spending in South Korea. Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 32, No. 4. Ward, Michael D., David R. Davis and Steve Chan. 1993. Military Spending and Economic Growth in Taiwan. Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 19, No. 4. Economics models Public economics Military economics William Jennings Bryan