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>Subject: [healthnotwar] Cost of War
>Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 09:07:28 -0500
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>January 17, 2007
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>Copyright 2007 
><http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html> The New York 
>Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>
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><http://www.nytimes.com/>
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>January 17, 2007
>Economix
>
>
>  What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy
>
>By DAVID LEONHARDT
>
>The human mind isn't very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2 
>trillion. We don't deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, and 
>so when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it from 
>any other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion -- they all start to 
>sound the same.
>
>The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the number 
>itself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When you 
>do that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.
>
>For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health 
>campaign -- a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every 
>American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a 
>global immunization campaign to save millions of children's lives.
>
>Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn't use up 
>even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, 
>starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across 
>the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in 
>reconstruction funds.
>
>The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The 
>recommendations of the 9/11 Commission <http://www.9-11commission.gov/> 
>that have not been put in place -- better baggage and cargo screening, 
>stronger measures against nuclear proliferation -- could be enacted. 
>Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the 
>Taliban 
><http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/taliban/index.html?inline=nyt-org>'s 
>recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in 
>Darfur.
>
>All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:
>
>The war in Iraq 
><http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iraq/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>.
>
>In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated 
>that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress 
>largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit 
>more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, 
>but President Bush fired him in part for saying so.
>
>These estimates probably would have turned out to be too optimistic even if 
>the war had gone well. Throughout history, people have typically 
>underestimated the cost of war, as William Nordhaus, a Yale 
><http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/y/yale_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 
>economist, has pointed out 
><http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/AAAS_War_Iraq_2.pdf>.
>
>But the deteriorating situation in Iraq has caused the initial predictions 
>to be off the mark by a scale that is difficult to fathom. The operation 
>itself -- the helicopters, the tanks, the fuel needed to run them, the 
>combat pay for enlisted troops, the salaries of reservists and contractors, 
>the rebuilding of Iraq -- is costing more than $300 million a day, 
>estimates Scott Wallsten <http://www.wallsten.net/>, an economist in 
>Washington.
>
>That translates into a couple of billion dollars a week and, over the full 
>course of the war, an eventual total of $700 billion in direct spending.
>
>The two best-known analyses of the war's costs agree on this figure, but 
>they diverge from there. Linda Bilmes 
><http://ksgfaculty.harvard.edu/Linda_Bilmes>, at the Kennedy School of 
>Government at Harvard 
><http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/harvard_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org>, 
>and Joseph Stiglitz <http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/>, a 
>Nobel laureate 
><http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/nobel_prizes/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> 
>and former Clinton administration adviser, put a total price tag of more 
>than $2 trillion 
><http://www.milkeninstitute.org/publications/review/2006_12/76_83mr32.pdf> 
>on the war. They include a number of indirect costs, like the economic 
>stimulus that the war funds would have provided if they had been spent in 
>this country.
>
>Mr. Wallsten, who worked with Katrina Kosec, another economist, argues for 
>a figure closer to $1 trillion in today's dollars. My own estimate falls on 
>the conservative side, largely because it focuses on the actual money that 
>Americans would have been able to spend in the absence of a war. I didn't 
>even attempt to put a monetary value on the more than 3,000 American deaths 
>in the war.
>
>Besides the direct military spending, I'm including the gas tax that the 
>war has effectively imposed on American families (to the benefit of 
>oil-producing countries like Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia). At the start 
>of 2003, a barrel of oil was selling for $30. Since then, the average price 
>has been about $50. Attributing even $5 of this difference to the conflict 
>adds another $150 billion to the war's price tag, Ms. Bilmes and Mr. 
>Stiglitz say.
>
>The war has also guaranteed some big future expenses. Replacing the 
>hardware used in Iraq and otherwise getting the United States military back 
>into its prewar fighting shape could cost $100 billion. And if this war's 
>veterans receive disability payments and medical care at the same rate as 
>veterans of the first gulf war, their health costs will add up to $250 
>billion <http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/RWP/RWP07-001>. 
>If the disability rate matches Vietnam's, the number climbs higher. Either 
>way, Ms. Bilmes says, "It's like a miniature Medicare."
>
>In economic terms, you can think of these medical costs as the difference 
>between how productive the soldiers would have been as, say, computer 
>programmers or firefighters and how productive they will be as wounded 
>veterans. In human terms, you can think of soldiers like Jason Poole, a 
>young corporal profiled in The New York Times last year 
><http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/national/22wounded.html>. Before the 
>war, he had planned to be a teacher. After being hit by a roadside bomb in 
>2004, he spent hundreds of hours learning to walk and talk again, and he 
>now splits his time between a community college and a hospital in Northern 
>California.
>
>Whatever number you use for the war's total cost, it will tower over costs 
>that normally seem prohibitive. Right now, including everything, the war is 
>costing about $200 billion a year.
>
>Treating heart disease and diabetes, by contrast, would probably cost about 
>$50 billion a year. The remaining 9/11 Commission recommendations -- held 
>up in Congress partly because of their cost -- might cost somewhat less. 
>Universal preschool would be $35 billion. In Afghanistan, $10 billion could 
>make a real difference. At the National Cancer Institute 
><http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_cancer_institute/index.html?inline=nyt-org>, 
>annual budget is about $6 billion 
><http://plan2007.cancer.gov/NCIBudgetRequest.shtml>.
>
>"This war has skewed our thinking about resources," said Mr. Wallsten, a 
>senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a 
>conservative-leaning research group. "In the context of the war, $20 
>billion is nothing."
>
>As it happens, $20 billion is not a bad ballpark estimate for the added 
>cost of Mr. Bush's planned surge in troops. By itself, of course, that 
>price tag doesn't mean the surge is a bad idea. If it offers the best 
>chance to stabilize Iraq, then it may well be the right option.
>
>But the standard shouldn't simply be whether a surge is better than the 
>most popular alternative -- a far-less-expensive political strategy that 
>includes getting tough with the Iraqi government. The standard should be 
>whether the surge would be better than the political strategy plus whatever 
>else might be accomplished with the $20 billion.
>
>This time, it would be nice to have that discussion before the troops reach 
>Iraq.
>
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