Guns and Butter.

The Defense Budget has come under attack recently as the source of a number of problems that the american economy faces. These problems range from unemployment to the size of the national debt. Because the defense portion of the budget is presently increasing while some non-defense programs are being reduced, the attacks are becoming more frequent. I think this is a natural reaction born out of frustration in trying to cope with the many facets of our economic problems However, decreasing the military budget will only exacerbate our and the rest of the free worlds problems. Critics of defense spending have resurrected the often debated issue of the trade- off between spending for national defense and spending for social programs, also known as the Guns VS Butter debate. Their premise is that dollars spent on defense hardware come at the expense of basic social programs. History does not support this contention. The purpose of this presentation is first to identify the forces that drive the need for defense spending second, to review the recent history of the American economy and the defense budget and finally to provide some perspectives on the relative cost of defense.