The Bill for Defense

Herodotus figured that 100,000 men toiled 20 years in the hot Egyptian sun to build the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Assuming a twelve-hour day and a seven-day week, this works out at 8.7 billion man-hours. The U.S. is now getting ready to put forth every year a defense effort equivalent to five Pyramids of Cheops.

Last week's action by Congress on the $56 billion arms bill raises total defense estimates to $74 billion a year. Other items: an estimated $4.5 billion for another year of war in Korea, $5.7 billion for military construction, and $7.8 billion for the nation's allies. At an average wage of $1.75 an hour, $74 billion will buy 42 billion man-hours of work. Theoretically, the whole U.S. labor force of 62 million will have to work for 17 weeks to pay the $74 billion tax bill. The $74 billion tax bill is 3 1/2 times what the U.S. spends for shoes and clothing, almost four times what it spends for shelter, almost 14 times what it spends for transportation. It would buy enough four-door Chevrolet sedans to stretch bumper to bumper four times around the world. It would provide for all U.S. medical care for eight years, or all U.S. education for a decade. It would build 200 Panama Canals.

In World War II, the nation spent at a higher rate ($90 billion in the peak year of 1945).But the present spending has no clearly visible end. As far as anyone can tell, the U.S. taxpayer will go on & on building his five pyramids (or more) a year.

This effort, unprecedented in history, is partly caused by changes in military technology: in Julius Caesar's day, the average cost of killing a man in war was 75-c-; in World War I, it was $21,000, in World War II $75,000, and the cost is still going up. The U.S. would not have a chance of meeting the increased cost of security if it were not for changes in industrial technology, which may be moving even faster than military technology. Nobody knows whether the U.S. can, in fact, carry the burden. It is only certain that no other nation ever could. Two centuries ago, a nation that could spend on sustained defense 10% of its food bill would have been a marvel. The U.S. now thinks it can spend $7 billion more for defense in a year than it does for its total annual food bill.

This cost, arising out of a successful conspiracy in Russia 33 years ago, plus Communist gains and American blunders since then, has to be shouldered. But neither Americans nor their allies can ignore the fact that $74 billion is $480 for every man, woman & child in the U.S. As Winston Churchill might put it: Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many.

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