This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.                             the guys: philogynist jaime tony - the gals:raymi raspil

        20080527   

How much is that doggy in the window?
Michael considered fate at 15:19   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

You figure our good friend Joe, while accounting for the indirect costs of the Iraq war, particularly the 'loss of economic productivity' stat, included the costs of people sitting around figuring out the indirect cost of the Iraq war, considering that if there was no war, maybe he would be doing something actually productive?
Also, buddy decided that the "Mars expedition" was a good example of economic productivity, avoiding the obvious, but apropros and ironic "alternative energy research". I would suggest this omission is the result of a lack of tangible outcome of alternative energy research, but $4.00 gas seems pretty transcendent. 
Back in March I mentioned this quote, by Jaime, in a post of mine:
Just thinking about [a $25,000 windfall] can be fun in itself. When you have a little money to play with, you can fantasize and own everything, but once you spend it, you only own what you bought.
Never before has Jaime's statement been more painfully true with the Iraq war, where the direct cost to our gov'ment - counting only funds appropriated by Congress — so far runs to roughly $523Bn, according to this guy:
However, that's the direct cost — money directly spent on the project. There are indirect costs, too: Joseph Stiglitz estimates the true cost of the war to be $3Tn to the United States, and $3Tn to the rest of the global economy. These are indirect costs, and factor in the long-term additional expenses that the war has accrued — everything from caring for brain-damaged soldiers for the next 50 years through to loss of economic productivity attributable to instabilities in the supply of oil from Iraq.
Direct costs or not, he goes on to ask what we could have spent the money on instead. It's the sort of window shopping we all like to do, but it just doesn't normally involve so much cold hard frickin' cash. One suggestion:
.. the direct costs of the Iraq war exceed the maximum cost estimate for a manned Mars expedition, infrastructure and all, by 20%.
And there is more in the comments.


Powered by Blogger

Check out heroecs, the robotics team competition website of my old supervisor's daughter. Fun stuff!
Page finished loading at: