The costs of war

We mostly hear about war's human toll, but Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes remind us that there are, as it turns out, very significant economic costs as well. The numbers are staggering. In a scathing indictment, contrasting the administration's preposterous (and surely deceitful) initial estimates of the war's cost, they crunched the numbers and came up with: 3 trillion dollars. American dollars (as my friend likes to add).

They point out the detrimental effects on the economy, but additionally run through the list of opportunity costs, that is, all the things we could have done with that money.

The Democratic presidential nominees have all but left Iraq out of the debate, preferring instead to focus on issues like whether Hillary will release her tax returns or whether Obama really is transformational. Why such 'issues' are even mentioned, let alone discussed ad nauseum remains a mystery to me. The more election cycles I live through, the more baffling I find how candidates and the news media make judgments of importance. We seem to be trapped in some tragedy of the commons, a state in which everyone knows what would be rational to collectively do, and yet prefers to act myopically and hence stupidly.

Perhaps it takes a Nobel prize winner in economics (Stiglitz) to shake us out of all this.

In this context it is interesting to note the conjunction of McCain's railing against pork projects with his war mongering. It turns out that the Iraq war is the biggest and most reckless pork project of all time.