What a stealth bomber costs in schools, hospitals, and homes

In 1953, President Dwight D Eisenhower delivered a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors that became known as “The Chance for Peace” Address.

America, eight years after the end of World War II and stuck in a quagmire in Korea, stared at the threat of a growing Soviet Union and had to make a decision: Build a strong military or focus on the problems plaguing the United States.

In that speech, he admits to the real cost of military buildup:

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

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 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, 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.

We know which path America chose. Europe, devastated from the bombs, dedicated its economy to rebuilding schools, hospitals, housing and, in general, a society built on generous welfare for all. America, clear-eyed, devoted nearly 15 percent of its income to the destroyers and bombs.

Europeans got universal healthcare, paid parental leave, pensions and housing support. Americans got medical debt and bragging rights to the world’s largest military-industrial complex.

Now seven decades later, the Trump administration seeks $67.1 billion in supplemental money for the Iran war and other Department of Defense expenses, such as munitions, drones and Army and National Guard deployments to the southern U.S. border and D.C. That is part of an $87.6 billion package that includes about $21 billion for munitions and $17.3 billion for operational costs.

Trump is on pace for the largest increase in federal debt relative to the size of the economy of any president since Eisenhower himself.

I have updated Eisenhower’s speech and ask voters in the United States to decide in November how we should spend our tax dollars:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and cannot find a home, those who are cold and are not clothed. This modern arms race is not spending money alone.

It is spending the calculus of engineers, the hands of machinists and construction crews, the futures of children who study on their phones because they have no access to computers or books.

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 another perpetual war, it is humanity hanging from another cross of iron.