guns versus butter model
description: macroeconomic relationship between defense spending and civilian welfare
88 results
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000
by Paul Kennedy · 15 Jan 1989 · 1,477pp · 311,310 words
increases in the size of the electorate were leading to considerable “social” spending for the first time. Yet if the increases in payments for “guns and butter” looked alarming in absolute terms, this was because the night-watchman state had been taking so little of an individual’s income in taxes, and
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commercial challenges of other countries. Unless there is an enemy immediately at the gate, high defense spending in this century has nearly always provoked a “guns versus butter” controversy. Less publicly, but of even greater significance for our purposes, it has provoked a debate upon the proper relationship of economic strength to
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the socioeconomic needs of its citizenry, and to ensure sustained growth, this last being essential both for the positive purposes of affording the required guns and butter at the present, and for the negative purpose of avoiding a relative economic decline which could hurt the people’s military and economic security in
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allocate more to military security than one whose citizens feel relatively unthreatened; a country rich in natural resources will find it easier to pay for guns and butter; a society determined upon economic growth in order to catch up to the others will have different priorities from one on the brink of
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a country of almost supernatural strength. It does mean that it is facing awkward choices. As one Russian expert has expressed it, “The policy of guns, butter, and growth—the political cornerstone of the Brezhnev era—is no longer possible … even under the more optimistic scenarios … the Soviet Union will face an
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unique. Which country in the world, one it tempted to ask, is not encountering problems in evolving a viable military policy, or in choosing between guns and butter and investment? From another perspective, however, the American position is a very special one. For all its economic and perhaps military decline, it remains
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this quotation; see also; “Can Andropov Control His Generals?” Economist, Aug. 6, 1983, pp. 33–35. 159. L. H. Gelb, “A Common Desire for Guns and Butter,” New York Times, Nov. 10, 1985, “The Week in Review” section, p. 2. 160. See the table in Holloway, Soviet Union and the Arms Race
Presidents of War
by Michael Beschloss · 8 Oct 2018
of Roosevelt and Truman, he rudely badgered the Federal Reserve Chairman, William McChesney Martin, to keep interest rates low so that he could have both “guns and butter.” The President finally agreed with Congress on a “temporary surcharge” of 10 percent on personal and corporate income taxes, as well as some spending
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., and Jeanne T. Heidler. Henry Clay: The Essential American. New York: Random House, 2010. Helsing, Jeffrey W. Johnson’s War / Johnson’s Great Society: The Guns and Butter Trap. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000. Hendrickson, Kenneth E., Jr. The Spanish-American War. Greenwood Guides to Historic Events, 1500–1900. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty
by Bradley K. Martin · 14 Oct 2004 · 1,509pp · 416,377 words
the beginning of 2000 by an economics professor at Kim Il-sung University, was that Kim Jong-il’s emphasis on “military-first” politics meant guns and butter. Yes, it was intended to “defend the nation from the invasion of hostile forces.” But it was “a comprehensive plan which includes an effective
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/Ruediger_Socialism.html. For a contrary view describing the military-first policy as a barrier to economic recovery, see Aidan Foster-Carter’s “North Korea: Guns or Butter?” posted April 6, 2004, Northwest Asia Peace and Security Network, http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0418_FosterCarter. html. 25. George Wehrfritz, with B
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, 133 military budget, 99, 368, 455–456 military dictatorship, under Kim Jong-il, 485 “military-first” ideology, 516 Communist Manifesto jettisoned in, 665–666 offering guns and butter, 656 military-industrial complex North Korean, 666 U.S., 84 militia, 99 minerals, 51, 58, 63–64, 124, 176, 366. See also energy; gold
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power
by Daniel Yergin · 23 Dec 2008 · 1,445pp · 469,426 words
countries, the race took place against a backdrop of social and labor unrest, of domestic conflicts, of financial and budgetary constraints. Britain underwent a classic guns-or-butter debate. The ruling Liberal party was torn between the "navalists," who supported a "big Navy" policy and an expanded Admiralty construction budget, and the
Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980
by Rick Perlstein · 17 Aug 2020
“Great Inflation” of 1970. Even decades later, economists didn’t agree about what had caused it. Most believed it had something to do with “guns and butter”: Lyndon Johnson’s refusal to raise taxes to pay for the Vietnam War, while simultaneously increasing spending for his Great Society. Richard Nixon’s venality
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arrived at the plight it was in now (by borrowing from the future during the golden years with printing-press money to pay for both guns and butter); and then, as he was discussing the reasons for the collapse of the auto industry, the slide show began, images with no rhyme or
The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won
by Victor Davis Hanson · 16 Oct 2017 · 908pp · 262,808 words
were almost as large in 1944 as they were in 1939. Whereas all the other economies of the war saw budgeting as a rivalry between guns and butter, in the United States the economy grew so vast that there was room for both the largest military and civilian economies in the nation
The Making of Modern Britain
by Andrew Marr · 16 May 2007 · 618pp · 180,430 words
streets, patriotic crowds were chanting for the latest hugely expensive war machines, the British Dreadnought battleships: ‘We want eight and we won’t wait.’ Guns or butter? Welfare or warfare? This was what really set the radical Liberal leaders on their collision course with the old establishment. Lloyd George needed to find
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
by Rick Perlstein · 1 Jan 2008 · 1,351pp · 404,177 words
hike was to acknowledge that the situation in Vietnam was an emergency. The notion that the nation could afford both Vietnam and the Great Society—“guns and butter”—was the central organizing principle of his presidency. Which is why Nixon hyped high prices as often as he did. He was planting a
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
by William Easterly · 1 Mar 2006
that trade-offs exist is to insist that each part of the budget is necessary for everything else to work. When asked to choose between guns and butter, the canny politician insists that guns are necessary to protect the butter. In the AIDS field, strategic responses gave us the mantra “prevention is
Merchants' War
by Stross, Charles · 30 Sep 2007 · 414pp · 123,666 words
of bondholders-the king had gone for neither, but had instead dismissed the quarrelsome political mosquitoes who kept insisting that he make a choice between guns and butter. It would have struck Erasmus as funny if he wasn't fully aware that it meant thousands were going to starve to death in
The Cold War
by Robert Cowley · 5 May 1992 · 546pp · 176,169 words
Begin the World Over
by Kung Li Sun · 14 Jun 2022 · 288pp · 84,613 words
Why the Allies Won
by Richard Overy · 29 Feb 2012 · 624pp · 191,758 words
Microserfs
by Douglas Coupland · 14 Feb 1995
The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made
by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas · 28 Feb 2012 · 1,150pp · 338,839 words
The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East
by Andrew Scott Cooper · 8 Aug 2011
More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy
by Philip Coggan · 6 Feb 2020 · 524pp · 155,947 words
The America That Reagan Built
by J. David Woodard · 15 Mar 2006
Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism
by Bhu Srinivasan · 25 Sep 2017 · 801pp · 209,348 words
Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist
by Alex Zevin · 12 Nov 2019 · 767pp · 208,933 words
Who Stole the American Dream?
by Hedrick Smith · 10 Sep 2012 · 598pp · 172,137 words
1939: A People's History
by Frederick Taylor · 26 Jun 2019 · 535pp · 144,827 words
Understanding Power
by Noam Chomsky · 26 Jul 2010
The Economic Weapon
by Nicholas Mulder · 15 Mar 2021
Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover
by Katrina Vanden Heuvel and William Greider · 9 Jan 2009 · 278pp · 82,069 words
The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food
by Lizzie Collingham · 1 Jan 2011 · 927pp · 236,812 words
Free Money for All: A Basic Income Guarantee Solution for the Twenty-First Century
by Mark Walker · 29 Nov 2015
America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy
by Robert B. Zoellick · 3 Aug 2020
The Streets Were Paved With Gold
by Ken Auletta · 14 Jul 1980 · 407pp · 135,242 words
Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order
by Parag Khanna · 4 Mar 2008 · 537pp · 158,544 words
Red Moon Rising
by Matthew Brzezinski · 2 Jan 2007 · 497pp · 124,144 words
Turning the Tide
by Noam Chomsky · 14 Sep 2015
The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism
by Noam Chomsky · 24 Oct 2014
The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall
by Michael Meyer · 7 Sep 2009 · 323pp · 95,188 words
Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict
by Eli Berman, Joseph H. Felter, Jacob N. Shapiro and Vestal Mcintyre · 12 May 2018 · 517pp · 147,591 words
Destined for War: America, China, and Thucydides's Trap
by Graham Allison · 29 May 2017 · 518pp · 128,324 words
Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare
by Edward Fishman · 25 Feb 2025 · 884pp · 221,861 words
The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy
by David Hoffman · 1 Jan 2009 · 719pp · 209,224 words
Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Gobal Crisis
by James Rickards · 10 Nov 2011 · 381pp · 101,559 words
Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government
by Robert Higgs and Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr. · 15 Jan 1987
Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street
by Peter L. Bernstein · 19 Jun 2005 · 425pp · 122,223 words
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
by John J. Mearsheimer · 1 Jan 2001 · 637pp · 199,158 words
Capitalism in America: A History
by Adrian Wooldridge and Alan Greenspan · 15 Oct 2018 · 585pp · 151,239 words
End the Fed
by Ron Paul · 5 Feb 2011
The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era
by Gary Gerstle · 14 Oct 2022 · 655pp · 156,367 words
The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again
by Robert D. Putnam · 12 Oct 2020 · 678pp · 160,676 words
The Cold War: A New History
by John Lewis Gaddis · 1 Jan 2005 · 392pp · 106,532 words
War and Gold: A Five-Hundred-Year History of Empires, Adventures, and Debt
by Kwasi Kwarteng · 12 May 2014 · 632pp · 159,454 words
The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite
by Ann Finkbeiner · 26 Mar 2007
The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism
by David Harvey · 1 Jan 2010 · 369pp · 94,588 words
On Power and Ideology
by Noam Chomsky · 7 Jul 2015
The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality From the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century
by Walter Scheidel · 17 Jan 2017 · 775pp · 208,604 words
A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order
by Richard Haass · 10 Jan 2017 · 286pp · 82,970 words
The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland—Then, Now, Tomorrow
by Gil Troy · 14 Apr 2018 · 649pp · 185,618 words
Servant Economy: Where America's Elite Is Sending the Middle Class
by Jeff Faux · 16 May 2012 · 364pp · 99,613 words
The World's Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations
by Sebastian Mallaby · 24 Apr 2006 · 605pp · 169,366 words
Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (And What We Can Do About It)
by William Poundstone · 5 Feb 2008
The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World
by Ruchir Sharma · 5 Jun 2016 · 566pp · 163,322 words
Culture of Terrorism
by Noam Chomsky · 19 Oct 2015
The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History
by Derek S. Hoff · 30 May 2012
Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics
by Robert Skidelsky · 13 Nov 2018
The Global Minotaur
by Yanis Varoufakis and Paul Mason · 4 Jul 2015 · 394pp · 85,734 words
Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth
by Andrew Smith · 3 Apr 2006 · 409pp · 138,088 words
New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI
by Frank Pasquale · 14 May 2020 · 1,172pp · 114,305 words
Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge
by Ian Kumekawa · 6 May 2025 · 422pp · 112,638 words
Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business
by Rana Foroohar · 16 May 2016 · 515pp · 132,295 words
Britain's Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation
by Brendan Simms · 27 Apr 2016 · 380pp · 116,919 words
Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better
by Clive Thompson · 11 Sep 2013 · 397pp · 110,130 words
Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies
by Judith Stein · 30 Apr 2010 · 497pp · 143,175 words
The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
by Sebastian Mallaby · 1 Feb 2022 · 935pp · 197,338 words
Panderer to Power
by Frederick Sheehan · 21 Oct 2009 · 435pp · 127,403 words
An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy
by Marc Levinson · 31 Jul 2016 · 409pp · 118,448 words
Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream
by Arianna Huffington · 7 Sep 2010 · 300pp · 78,475 words
The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System
by James Rickards · 7 Apr 2014 · 466pp · 127,728 words
Transcending the Cold War: Summits, Statecraft, and the Dissolution of Bipolarity in Europe, 1970–1990
by Kristina Spohr and David Reynolds · 24 Aug 2016 · 627pp · 127,613 words
Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future
by Paul Mason · 29 Jul 2015 · 378pp · 110,518 words
How Much Is Enough?: Money and the Good Life
by Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky · 18 Jun 2012 · 279pp · 87,910 words
Stigum's Money Market, 4E
by Marcia Stigum and Anthony Crescenzi · 9 Feb 2007 · 1,202pp · 424,886 words
Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's
by Ray Kroc · 1 Jan 1977 · 209pp · 70,734 words
Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam
by H. R. McMaster · 7 May 1998 · 615pp · 175,905 words
The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself-and Profit-from the Coming Energy Crisis
by Stephen Leeb and Donna Leeb · 12 Feb 2004 · 222pp · 70,559 words
Polaroids From the Dead
by Douglas Coupland · 1 Jan 1996
The Scandal of Money
by George Gilder · 23 Feb 2016 · 209pp · 53,236 words
Wealth Without a Job: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Freedom and Security Beyond the 9 to 5 Lifestyle
by Phil Laut and Andy Fuehl · 12 Sep 2004 · 290pp · 98,699 words
The Money Machine: How the City Works
by Philip Coggan · 1 Jul 2009 · 253pp · 79,214 words
Losing Control: The Emerging Threats to Western Prosperity
by Stephen D. King · 14 Jun 2010 · 561pp · 87,892 words
China's Future
by David Shambaugh · 11 Mar 2016 · 261pp · 57,595 words
The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives
by Sasha Abramsky · 15 Mar 2013 · 406pp · 113,841 words