Military spending versus other national priorities

"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 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 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."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

Now, more than 61 years later, the United States military budget continues to demonstrate misplaced priorities.  The current budget is $821 billion, far greater than any other nation in the world. According to an article in the NY Times, the military's most recent weapon of choice, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, is expected to cost taxpayers $396 billion.