The $2,000,000 Missile vs. Your Neighborhood Library

I had a debate with my neighbor yesterday about lawnmowers. He wants to buy this riding mower that looks like it belongs in a Transformer movie. It has zero-turn radius, cup holders, and headlights. It costs $4,000.

I asked him, “Okay, but what are you not buying so you can have the Transformer tractor?”

He looked at me like I was speaking Greek. But that is the most important question in economics. It is called Opportunity Cost.

Every dollar you spend on Thing A is a dollar you effectively stole from Thing B.

The Global Shopping List

We do this as individuals, but we also do it as a species. And nowhere is the receipt longer, or scarier, than in Defense Spending.

President Eisenhower (a guy who knew a thing or two about war) said it best in 1953: “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.”

He wasn’t being a hippie. He was being an accountant.

The Receipts Are Wild

I built the Cost of War Calculator because I wanted to visualize this “theft.”

>> See The Trade-Offs Here <<

When you run the numbers, the scale is brain-breaking:

• 1 F-35 Helmet: $400,000.
  • Trade-off: You could buy a decent house for a homeless family. For a hat.
• 1 Javelin Missile: $178,000.
  • Trade-off: Four years of college tuition. Gone in a literal puff of smoke.
• 1 Aircraft Carrier: $13,000,000,000.
  • Trade-off: You could build 650 brand new elementary schools.

It Is Not About Politics

This isn’t about whether we “need” defense. Maybe we do. The neighbor might really need that lawnmower if he has 5 acres of grass.

But we have to stop pretending the money comes from a magic void. It comes from the “Roads Budget.” It comes from the “Cancer Research Budget.” It comes from the “Pay Teachers More Than Baristas” Budget.

So go play with the calculator. See what a Tomahawk Cruise missile is worth in heart surgeries. It is sobering.

It makes you look at that fancy lawnmower and think: “Yeah, but I’d rather have the vacation.”