INTRODUCTION
“There are no solutions only trade-offs” in the ordinary course of life people come across different situations in which they have to let go of one thing for the satisfaction of another in simpler terms this means a trade-off. For example, a business man’s most valuable asset is his time, he has to allocate his time for different kinds of activities like attending a meeting with an important client; or spending quality time with his family, every hour he spends in a meeting he loses an hour of family time, and this is essentially known as a trade-off.
CLASSIC TRADE OFFS
GUNS AND BUTTER-:
When people are grouped into societies they face some classic trade-offs, like trade-off between “guns and butter”, due to limited resources a major dilemma faced by a country is deciding whether to spend more on national security (guns), or on consumer goods (butter), the more we spend on national security the living standard of people downgrades and the more we spend on consumer goods the threat to the country’s borders increases. Guns versus butter is an endless debate with no one fixed answer, different countries have different perspectives on this debate some countries like Pakistan have a massive defence budget compared to their almost negligible consumer spending, on the other hand there are some countries with no standing military like Palau where the only permitted force is the Palau police which is responsible for internal security, it’s external defence is the responsibility of the U.S.A. under the compact of free association. The guns versus butter debate can be best summed up by “CHANCE FOR PEACE SPEECH1” given by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 16, 1953, the excerpts of the speech are as follows:
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, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, and 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 populations. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty
1 EISENHOWER, D., 2021. Speeches | Eisenhower Presidential Library. [online] Eisenhowerlibrary.gov. Available at: <https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/speeches> [Accessed 28 January 2021].
miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter 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 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.
This speech was specifically given at a time when there was a lot of pressure on the U.S. government to increase military spending, and to take an aggressive stance against soviet union, but after the death of soviet dictator Joseph Stalin on march 5, 1953, there was a possibility of peace between the two countries which could have ended the cold war. This speech clearly denotes the trade-off between guns and butter, and how it affects the poor which is why this speech is being quoted in this article to signify the importance of butter over guns.
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