You may be reading more into that than is there. IIRC Eisenhower's statement was akin to the "Guns or Butter" argument that is ongoing in the different economics schools.
>>You may be reading more into that than is there. IIRC Eisenhower’s statement was akin to the “Guns or Butter” argument that is ongoing in the different economics schools.
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Perhaps so. If so, it is unfortunate that the quote is so easily abused.
The rest of the quote:
“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 fifty miles of concrete pavement. 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 is, I repeat, 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.”
I think Mad Dawgg is right, this isn’t about redistributing wealth more “fairly”, but choosing how we want to spend resources. Defense is very important, but so are all the other things he mentions. This seems very much in line with his warning about the military industrial complex to me.