Merry Christmas
Song at the end of the movie Arbitrage with Richard Gere. Bjork. Love it. Simple.
Guns vs. Butter
The most bone chilling day many of us has had in a long time occured yesterday. Yet again the senseless slaughter of young innocents occured in the USA. As I listened to the harrowing news on the radio while Christmas shopping it reminded me of the old ‘Guns vs Butter’ postulate from my economics classes in university.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_versus_butter_model. In this theory, ‘The nation will have to decide which balance of guns versus butter best fulfill its needs.’ This is basically about whether a country invests in military or armaments to defend itself or invests in social infrastructure.
Here is an interesting statistic: There are 129,817 federally licensed firearms dealers in the United States, according to the latest Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives numbers as of Aug. 1, 2012 (source ABC News).
That same article quotes the Food Marketing Institute as counting the number of grocery stores in the U.S. as 36,569.
Guns vs. Butter: America has decided. With saddening, maddening and tragic consequences.