After wildly lowballing the cost of the Iraq conflict at a mere $50 to $60 billion, the Bush administration has been concealing the full economic toll. The spending on military operations is merely the tip of a vast fiscal iceberg. In an excerpt from their new book, the authors calculate the grim bottom line.
by JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ and LINDA J. BILMES
Vanity Fair
But even the $600 billion number is disingenuous—which is to say false. The true cost of the war in Iraq, according to our calculations, will, by the time America has extricated itself, exceed $3 trillion. And this is a deliberately conservative estimate. The ultimate cost may well be much higher.
Why the huge difference between our number and the administration’s? One big reason lies in the misleading way the federal government does its accounting. Any publicly owned business, no matter how small, is required by law to use a method of accounting that takes future obligations into consideration. This is known as “accrual” accounting. But Defense Department accounting is done on a “cash” basis, which logs only what the government is actually spending day by day and ignores future obligations. In the case of the Iraq war, the future obligations are huge.
They include the cost of replacing military equipment, which is being used up at 6 to 10 times the peacetime rate. They also include the cost of providing health care and disability payments for our returning troops. These costs will be especially high because of our improved ability to keep even the most horribly wounded soldiers alive.
2 comments:
Mr Vessey - do you care to DETAIL all of the cost components that they used to come up with this $3,000 billion figure?
They include:
* The lifetime medical treatment of any service man who served in Iraq. Thus if a 21 year old infantry man has a leg amputated his treatment provided by the VA until he dies was included.
* They included the costs of the replacement of all weapon systems. FAIR ENOUGH - it's just that it is ironic that this spending is used in a NEGATIVE MANNER while there are presently several legislators who are fighting vigorously to stop the planned spending cuts of certain military programs that will impact JOBS in their districts. ALL THAT I AM ASKING FOR IS CONSISTENCY.
Mr Vesey - even if the $3,000 billion over 9 years comes to be true - your grounding is a bit shaky in that you likely approve of Obama's plan to increase the federal debt by $10,000 billion in 10 years IF his spending package is passed unchanged.
I maintain that YOU nor those 2 professors that coined the $3,000 billion number can come up with any justification that we have spent MORE THAN approximately $900 billion in the 8 years that the USA has been in Iraq.
[quote]For example, the failure to provide adequate budgetary support for the Veterans Health Administration has forced many veterans to buy private medical care. While this reduces government spending, there are no real savings for the country. Similarly, relying on the National Guard and the reserves to help fight the war removes hundreds of thousands of workers from the civilian labor force, imposing real costs on the economy as a whole—not to mention on the men and women who are suddenly called to active duty, and on their families.[/quote]
As I expected - Throw the entire kitchen sink into the tally in which secondary and tertiary costs of anything imaginable is thrown into the war.
DV - I hope that one day you and KCnulan do a joint study on the cost of drug use in this nation - the illegal type of drugs.
1) Each puff on a joint is worth $1 off of a person's life.
2) Each hour of inebriation is one hour that a mother doesn't provide useful guidance to her children. At the union wage rate this should be $45 per hour in losses.
3) Each gallon of gasoline used by an addict to seek out a drug hit is another quantity of pollution that impacts Global Warming. Thus each trip to the drug dealer costs $100 in environmental damage.
If any operative looks hard enough Mr Vesey - they can indeed articulate all sorts of creative scenarios.
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