Governments have to decide how to spend taxpayers' money. Economists call this a choice between guns and butter.
Guns represent the military expenditures that governments make.
Butter represents all the government's non-military expenditures.
Examples include spending on the environment, healthcare, education and infrastructure.
How much a nation spends on guns and how much it spends on butter is a decision best left to politicians and the public.
In this decision-making process, economists observe that every dollar spent on guns, is a dollar that cannot be spent on non-military expenditures like butter.
Every dollar spent on non-military expenditures is one dollar less that can be spent on defense.
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