The Real Costs of the Iraq War
I was at Marginal Revolution and found a link to a new Joseph Stiglitz piece. Columbia University Professor Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner in 2001, and Harvard's Linda Blimes argue that, once again, the USFG and the White House have severely underestimated the costs of the war in Iraq. The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) has sanctioned over $500 bn total (which extends through the next decade), but Stiglitz argues that such estimates grossly understate the true cost of the war, despite the White House's insistance that they are overestimating the costs.
The piece is a bit lengthy, but I think it is worth reading the introduction and conclusion at least. There is also a brief on it at The Guardian, with the interesting headline "Iraq War could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel prize-winning economist".
The piece is a bit lengthy, but I think it is worth reading the introduction and conclusion at least. There is also a brief on it at The Guardian, with the interesting headline "Iraq War could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel prize-winning economist".
posted by arun at 5:15 PM
2 Comments:
Hey Arun. Now I'll admit I didn't read the whole article -- I primarily read the introduction (lol my reading your blogger is procrastination :-D), and while I agree with a majority of pundits/scholars out there that the war is WAYY more expensive than anyone thought it would be, I think some of this reasoning is somewhat suspect.
First, the analysis that soldiers and civilians dying equate to several billion dollars in worth seems a bit exaggerated to me in that this is assessed from a $6 million/person estimate based on what the government values vis-a-vis "safety and environmental regulation" seems a bit suspect to me.
Moreover, a good deal of the analysis is very speculative in terms of the cost -- ie the economic cost of having soldiers in Iraq is fewer reserves for Katrina -- numbers which I suspect are difficult to readily measure, as Stiglitz in his desire to factor in "economic costs" as opposed to "accounting costs" doesn't factor in that just b/c we had the reservists here doesn't mean there would have been that much of a benefit.
Moreover, he does try to factor in a "cost" to security by the standard argument of making other people hate us more leading to more terrorism and anxiety etc etc, but this, to me, is also somewhat facetious in the sense that we don't really KNOW what the impacts are -- we could debate FOREVER on whether or not the Iraq War improved or disimproved our security both sides making valuable arguments (I will say for the record that I feel like a carefully and successfully planned out operation would have made us more safe, although at this point, I'm in the group which laments the Bush administration's pitiful leadership in the field making us probably less safe).
Anyways, to answer your question, Arun, I think Blogger is awesome, and I'll note why in a future post ;-)
Maybe I should stop reading MR, since you mirror all their posts. :p
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