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6
and bombs, or the sudden shock of a
high-powered bullet.
Whatever your stand on killing, your
whole life is dramatically affected by it.
You
may,
without realizing it, owe your
job to the business of death. You may,
without realizing it,
be
busily enjoyiog
the paraphernalia and gadgetry of a
modern age of affiuence which owes its
very being to the never-ending quest
for means
to
kill. Practically
a/1
our
most significant breakthroughs in science,
industry, technology, aerospace, medi–
cine, and even agriculture, are direct
"spin-off" from man's bizarre search for
destructive devices.
But the traffic in arms, and the search
for more effective ones, goes on.
Worldwide Armaments
Expend iture
In late
1969
the U. S. Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency surveyed the
arms spending of
120
countries. The
latest year for which they had com–
prehensive data was
1967.
Then the
world's military expenditures totalled
an incredible
$182
billion. This aver–
aged
$53
for every man, woman and
child on earth. (One estimated average
for
1970
was
$56.)
This
$182
BILLION
for defense was approximately 7% of
the total Gross World Product.
Note also that the average per-capita
income - including the U. S. - is
only 720 dollars per ycar. That means
the world spends 7 pcrcent of its
citizens' income
($53
per man, woman
and child) on armaments and the mili–
tary. More staggering is the fact that
about
28
out of
142
nations have a per–
capita yearly income of
$100
or less -
close to the
$53
per person spent on
armaments and military worldwide.
If
the recent cate of increase in mili–
tary spending continues to climb as at
present, the arms cace may cost S4 tril–
lion over the next decade. This is
fOUR
TIMES
the yearly Gross National Prod–
uct of the United States. This exceeds
the total value of all U. S. land, build–
ings, machinery, cash and business.
If
one silver dollar coin were dropped
every second, it would take
126,000
years to exhaust this amount of money
estimated to be spent on world arma–
ments in the next ten years. Or this
four trill ion dollars could pave the entire
T!Je
PLAIN TRUTH
nation of Denmark with one-dollar bilb
- or a string of thousand dollar bills
to
the moon and back. More to the
point, this four trillion could virtually
feed, clothe, aod house the world's poor
for a year.
According to UNESCO, world arms
expenditure between
1964
and
1966
was climbing faster than Gross World
Product.
For every dollar the world devotes
to
closiog the rich-poor economic gap,
$20
are spent on arms. In
1969,
the
world spent three times as much on
arms as it did on health. Resources
devoted to education also take a back
seat. This area receives
40
percent less
than arms. As one writer put it, "the
pen
is
mud1 less mighty than the
sword."
The estimated
$200
billion the world
spent
in
1970
oo armaments would
provide
TEN MJLLJON
families with a
fine, moderate-cost surburban-type home.
The price tag of one of the new proto–
type bombees equal the price of many
tractors.
Price Tag of Armaments
Goes Up
Meanwhile the grisly "kill cost" per
individual enemy death has mounted
dramatically. In the days of Julius
Caesar it cost about
75
cents to kill an
enemy soldier. Because of inRation and
greater technology, the cost rose to
about
$3,000
per enemy dead during
Napoleon's time.
Since then the cost has riscn with
burgeoning defense expenditures. Dur–
ing World War
J,
it cost the United
States about
$21,000
to kill an enemy
soldier. World War II was even more
expensive - costing
ten
times that
amount.
Already, the war in Vietnam is cost–
ing the United States
Sl 70,000
per
enemy
death. One estímate put the total
at over half a millioo dollars when all
costs such as war debts, veterans' ben–
efits, are considered.
As a result, the cost of armaments
and military becomes a weighty eco–
nomic burden, especially for many poor
nations.
Somehow, we find ourselves una–
vailed of statistics which would show
how much moncy the world has spent,