ABSTRACT
The costs of military spending are usually described in billions of dollars or as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP). The real costs of military activities are measured in human and natural resources and in the stocks of productive capital absorbed in producing, transporting, and using weapons and other military equipment. Certain categories of defense activity, while absorbing resources that the civilian economy would use, replace similar goods and services that the civilian economy would otherwise have had to provide. The share of GDP devoted to nonmilitary investment has not suffered on account of a larger defense share; rather, it is primarily consumption that is affected. According to Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, "Arguments that significant increases or decreases in defense spending were economically feasible rested on the assumption that there would be widespread public support for such changes".
