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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (347892)	8/22/2007 10:16:17 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574109

A trillion plus might be the eventual cost in Iraq, or the cost if you include indirect costs and interest. If you include eventual and indirect costs for a very strong enforced anti-global warming effort the cost could be quadrillions (world wide, not adjusted for inflation, long time period, including lost compounding on investments that would have been made with the money), or with more normal time frames (say within a decade) could easily be many trillions, far greater than Iraq. In many ways the cost for Iraq is irrelevant. You can take any very expensive proposed action, and say "well Iraq costs $500bil", or "Iraq costs $1tril and we did it". That might be a useful rhetorical device but beyond that its meaningless. The money already spent in Iraq is sunk costs. The money yet to be spent in Iraq could be debated but its a separate issue, except to the extent that it might crowd out other expensive initiatives.

To: combjelly who wrote (347892)	8/22/2007 10:19:44 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574109

So, are you trying to say that because we are throwing a trillion plus down the rat hole of Iraq, we can't make any investments in the future? No I'm trying to say that while imposing additional costs and limitations on the economy will generate some investment to cope with the new situation, its not reasonable to look at this investment as economic growth. If you have power from X, and you force a shift to Y, you will get a lot of investment in Y, but to a large extent that investment is replacing the existing stock of investment. Might some of it represent a real increase in the stock of investment? Sure, there are advantages from new power sources, and also newer plants will take longer before they where out or become obsolete. But much of it is just replacement and isn't real economic growth any more than breaking windows and replacing them represents economic growth, or rebuilding New Orleans after Katrina represents real growth.