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.
- Eisenhower
You really ought to read the original comment you replied to again - their point about unnecessary arms races seems to have triggered some kind of automatic defense in your brain.
But anyway. Suppose we spent only as much as China does, the #2 defense spender. They spent $229 billion. They also don't really value human life, soldiers are expendable in vast quantities if it advances the aim of the state--loss of life is much less tolerable in America. Do you think that would be sufficient for the US defense goals? We currently spent $173B just on salaries for servicemen, and then another $286 billion on operations, followed by $141 billion for procurement and $106 billion for research and development. Yes there is waste in the military, but is there $450 billion worth of waste and cruft? Are we to believe that are leaders and generals have miscalculated by more than 50%? Should we fire half our soldiers, scuttle our carrier strike groups, and abandon efforts to modernize the air force?