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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: tejek who wrote (183548)2/24/2004 6:45:12 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 1575622
 
More. If done quickly a lot more.

Edit - That's in dollar terms. Counting lives makes it more complex because

1 - You have to decide how much money its going to take to equal a life. That whole idea might sound crass but would you really have the country spend say a years worth of our GDP to spend one life? I doubt it. Would you spend $1000 to save a life? I'm almost sure you would. Somewhere in between is a reasonable cost per life

and

2 - The amount of lives to put in the equation is very uncertain. Not only do we not now how many lives have been lost in Iraq because of the war but we don't know how many lives would have been lost by the combination of continuing the santctions and Saddam's continued leadership of Iraq, if we didn't have the war. Also we don't know how many lives would be lost by the attempt for energy independence. The fact that it would cost so much means we would put resources (not just money but also the time of skilled researches and the general attention of the US population and its government) into achieving energy independence means that resources would be removed from other areas some of which could have saved lives. Everything from medical research, to actual use of the new medicines and techniques the research discovers, to improving intersections, to reducing poverty cost money. Also if we where to be energy indpendent we would have to drive smaller cars which would be less safe in a crash.

In any case even if we had achieved energy independence in recent years the Iraq war would probably have happened anyway.

Tim
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