Quote of the day: Have you stepped back lately and thought about just what our little adventure in Iraq is costing us, literally?
>
"The total costs of the war, including the budgetary, social and macroeconomic costs, are likely to exceed $2 trillion."
--economists Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University (a Nobel laureate) [left] and Linda Bilmes of Harvard University [below], in a newly published update of an earlier study they did, quoted by Nicholas Kristof in his NYT column today, "Iraq and Your Wallet"
"In the run-up to the Iraq war," Kristof writes, "Donald Rumsfeld estimated that the overall cost would be under $50 billion. Paul Wolfowitz argued that Iraq could use its oil to 'finance its own reconstruction.'"But now several careful studies have attempted to tote up various costs, and they suggest that the tab will be more than $1 trillion--perhaps more than $2 trillion. The higher sum would amount to $6,600 per American man, woman and child."
There's a lot more to be said, just about the basic arithmetic of financing the war in Iraq--the scope of the debt stretching decades into the future, where the money is coming from to pay for it, what else we might be doing with it--and Kristof is worth reading today on all these fronts.*
But for now I'm just thinking about these basic numbers. Amazingly, it almost doesn't matter--right now, anyway--whether we're talking $1 trillion or $2 trillion. Even more amazingly, it almost doesn't matter--right now, anyway--whether the administration officials who got us into this mess believed their own cockamamie numbers, or even whether they would have done the same thing if they had had accurate cost projections. An extra trillion bucks here or there, what's the diff? And does it really matter, given the scale of the debacle, whether these people down-the-line lied about the commitment they were suckering us into or were simply that stupid and incompetent?
Oh sure, it makes a difference, but not for right now. Right now I just want to allow the raw numbers to sink in:
• what they said it would cost, and--
• what we're guessing it will actually cost,
• along with, perhaps, some consideration of what we've gotten for the money, just for perspective.
(It's also okay, I think, to remember that that poor schlub of a trained-poodle economist Larry Lindsey managed to become one of the few people actually fired from the Bush administration, not long after he attempted to answer the question of how much such an adventure would cost, even though his estimate was undoubtedly ridiculously low. Of course, there are those who believe that Lindsey was fired for being fat. Like me, for instance. I really do believe it. Well, actually, I believe both: (a) that the people who actually forced the poodle out, which I would assume were some combination of "Big Dick" Cheney and "Dandy Don" Rumsfeld and their minions, wanted him gone for his disloyalty in daring to share information with, gasp!, the public, and (b) that the way they sold the ax job to our Chimpy was by pointing out that the guy not only was overweight but refused to jog with his commander-in-chief (shocking!). As a fringe benefit, once the deed was done they could spread the story that the poodle was fired because he was fat--to add a dollop of humiliation to the shit-canning. In case you didn't know, these are not nice people. But we digress.)
Have you let those numbers sink in? At the front end: projected cost of under $50 billion, or maybe nothing! At the rear end: bills piling up to the $1 trillion mark--or maybe $2 trillion, who's counting?
Now, just one more thing, especially since I hear there's an election of some sort coming up. You know how we keep seeing those polls that measure "approval" ratings of the administration's "handling" of the war and all the other matters it's supposed to be "handling"? Why are we still reading such polls? How is it possible, again staring at these raw numbers, that any of these people still have jobs?
- - - - - - - - - -
*As usual with NYT columns, the full text of Kristof's is appended in a comment.
posted by KenInNY @ 8:10 AM
2 comments
|
Reddit
2 Comments:
Here is the full text of the Kristof column:
October 24, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Iraq and Your Wallet
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
For every additional second we stay in Iraq, we taxpayers will end up paying an additional $6,300.
So aside from the rising body counts and all the other good reasons to adopt a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, here's another: We are spending vast sums there that would be better spent rescuing the American health care system, developing alternative forms of energy and making a serious effort to reduce global poverty.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, Donald Rumsfeld estimated that the overall cost would be under $50 billion. Paul Wolfowitz argued that Iraq could use its oil to "finance its own reconstruction."
But now several careful studies have attempted to tote up various costs, and they suggest that the tab will be more than $1 trillion--perhaps more than $2 trillion. The higher sum would amount to $6,600 per American man, woman and child.
"The total costs of the war, including the budgetary, social and macroeconomic costs, are likely to exceed $2 trillion," Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-winning economist at Columbia, writes in an updated new study with Linda Bilmes, a public finance specialist at Harvard. Their report has just appeared in the Milken Institute Review, as an update on a paper presented earlier this year.
Just to put that $2 trillion in perspective, it is four times the additional cost needed to provide health insurance for all uninsured Americans for the next decade. It is 1,600 times Mr. Bush's financing for his vaunted hydrogen energy project.
Another study, by two economists at the American Enterprise Institute, used somewhat different assumptions and came up with a lower figure--about $1 trillion. Those economists set up a nifty Web site, www.aei-brookings.org/iraqcosts, where you can tinker with the underlying assumptions and come up with your own personal estimates.
Of course, many of the costs are hidden and haven't even been spent yet. For example, more than 3,000 American veterans have suffered severe head injuries in Iraq, and the U.S. government will have to pay for round-the-clock care for many of them for decades. The cost ranges from $600,000 to $5 million per person.
Then there are disability payments that will continue for a half-century. Among veterans of the first gulf war--in which ground combat lasted only 100 hours--40 percent ended up receiving disability payments, still costing us $2 billion each year. We don't know how many of today's veterans will claim such benefits, but in the first quarter of this year more people sought care through the Department of Veterans Affairs than the Bush administration had budgeted for the entire year.
The war has also forced the military to offer re-enlistment bonuses that in exceptional circumstances reach $150,000. Likewise, tanks, helicopters and other battlefield equipment will have to be replaced early, since the Pentagon says they are being worn out at up to six times the peacetime rate.
The administration didn't raise taxes to pay for the war, so we're financing it by borrowing from China and other countries. Those borrowing costs are estimated to range from $264 billion to $308 billion in interest.
Then there are economic costs to the nation as a whole. For example, the price of oil was in the $20- to $30-a-barrel range early in this decade but has now shot up to more than $50, partly because of the drop in Iraq's oil exports and partly because of war-related instability in the Middle East. Professors Stiglitz and Bilmes note that if just $10 of the increase is attributable to the war, that amounts to a $450 billion drag on the economy over six years.
The bottom line is that not only have we squandered 2,800 American lives and considerable American prestige in Iraq, but we're also paying $18,000 per household to do so.
We still face the choice of whether to remain in Iraq indefinitely or to impose a timetable and withdraw U.S. troops. These studies suggest that every additional year we keep our troops in Iraq will add $200 billion to our tax bills.
My vote would be to spend a chunk of that sum instead fighting malaria, AIDS and maternal mortality, bolstering American schools, and assuring health care for all Americans. We're spending $380,000 for every extra minute we stay in Iraq, and we can find better ways to spend that money.
In our current Orwellian reality, Bush, the fiscal conservative, is running up trillions of dollars debt.It's enough to make your head spin.
A must read from Assimilated Press:
China Demands Florida & Texas In Place of Debt
Post a Comment
<< Home