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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: jttmab who wrote (185612)	4/25/2006 5:17:56 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (2) of 281500

The Cost of The War pascalriche's picture By Pascal Riche \| bio Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes plan to present this week a paper estimating the cost of the Iraq War at between $1-2 trillion. This is far higher than earlier estimates of $100-200 billion. Here is their statement: NEW STUDY SUGGESTS ECONOMIC COST OF IRAQ WAR MUCH LARGER THAN PREVIOUSLY RECOGNIZED A new study by two leading academic experts suggests that the costs of the Iraq war will be substantially higher than previously reckoned. In a paper presented to this week’s Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting in Boston MA., Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes and Columbia University Professor and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz calculate that the war is likely to cost the United States a minimum of nearly one trillion dollars and potentially over $2 trillion. The study expands on traditional budgetary estimates by including costs such as lifetime disability and health care for the over16,000 injured, one fifth of whom have serious brain or spinal injuries. It then goes on to analyze the costs to the economy, including the economic value of lives lost and the impact of factors such as higher oil prices that can be partly attributed to the conflict in Iraq. The paper also calculates the impact on the economy if a proportion of the money spent on the Iraq war were spent in other ways, including on investments in the United States “Shortly before the war, when Administration economist Larry Lindsey suggested that the costs might range between $100 and $200 billion, Administration spokesmen quickly distanced themselves from those numbers,” points out Professor Stiglitz. “But in retrospect, it appears that Lindsey’s numbers represented a gross underestimate of the actual costs.” The Allied Social Sciences Association meeting is attended by the nation’s leading economists and social scientists. It is sponsored jointly by the American Economic Association and the Economists for Peace and Security. ________________________________________ The administration (and DoD) have learned good lessons about how to conduct unpopular wars. One of them is to get rid of draft and replace it with "reserve" enticement. The way membership in the National Guard and Reserve was (is?) advertised is misleading. Another lesson was embeding the journalists instead of letting them run free. And finally, they learned to spend the money to keep casualties low. I think it is safe to say that in this war money has been substituted for blood. In the long run, this may in fact be more harmful to the country. A few weeks ago Australia became officially debt free. Now that is the kind of conservatism I can respect. ST

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