Is It Helpful?
I'm wondering whether there's a useful analogy between spending a coupla trillion on a war, financed entirely by running up the national debt, and creating a potential depression-inducing financial crisis by overextending credit in the residential housing market. I feel like they're both symptoms of the same irrational view of how money should properly be used, but the distinctions probably outweigh the similarities. This is meant as a call for ideas, rather than me trying to make some overarching point.
posted by QueensGuy @ 9:08 AM
10 Comments:
For a useful analogy, the first part has to be based on something more than a load of nonsense.
You can take the easy road out like others have and grab onto anything you don't like and say since the war in Iraq is bad too, they're related, QED.
Essentially, as long as the anti-war forces aren't capable of telling the truth if it goes against them (which it usually does), I'm not sure what the point is.
Here's a real analogy--the Lancet's absurdly dishonest, sky-high estimates of the casualties in Iraq are amazingly similar, in numerical error and motivation behind them, to the vast over-estimates of the cost of the war along with the underestimation of its value.
"I'm not sure what the point is."
If ye seek truth long enough, lo it shall be found.
Anonymous #1, you are my hero.
SWMBCg, etc.
Sigh. I was afraid that was all I'd get. Frankly the numbers aren't what I was after here -- I just took the CBO's as a reasonable estimate. Say it's only half of that: one trillion. You don't disagree that it's been financed solely by deficit spending, right? With "emergency appropriations" for costs we knew perfectly well were coming up, yes? That's really the point I was trying to get at. You believe the potential value of this war's benefits (times the likelihood they'll accrue) exceed the sunk costs of a trillion dollars in debt. Ok. But taking a tone that it's bloody obviously true doesn't make it any more persuasive a position.
queensguy says: You don't disagree that it's been financed solely by deficit spending, right?
You know, when you're in a deficit, everything is financed by deficit spending. Perhaps some programs are better tried in the rare times you're in surplus, but generally we have to judge programs on their effectiveness regardless. (Unfortunately with the Iraq war, as opposed to many domestic programs, it's almost impossible to tell how costly it would have been not to go in.)
I'm reminded of the brilliant rhetorical trick the Republicans used against the Democrats in 1994. There'd been a huge tax hike which Congress passed by only one vote. So, in addition to tying each Democrat candidate who voted yes with the unpopular Clinton, there were a ton of ads informing people in each district "it was your candidate whose vote got this tax hike passed." Next thing you know, the Republicans took over the House.
Perhaps deficit spending was the wrong term. There are three ways to finance a war: to reduce other federal spending; to borrow by issuing bonds and other treasury securities; or to raise taxes, either through a temporary tax surcharge or by scaling back previous tax cuts. Unlike all other wars we fought this century, we did only one of the three, thereby increasing our effective national "debt to income" ratio. Just like many prospective homeowners chose to ignore the debt to income ratios that would result from buying too much house for their needs. I guess it really was a bad attempt at analogy, because all I am hearing in response is "the war is good, not bad!" Frankly, I don't give a crap whether it's good or bad (for this purpose). I care about the mentality that believes in financing your goals by taking on more and more debt with no sense of the necessity of sacrifice.
I'm not a fan of deficit financing of government, but i think it is inappropriate to point at the Iraq War as the primary cause of current budget deficits. As LAG points out, any spending during a deficit budget year can be pointed at as the dollar that put us in the red. To my mind, when laying out a budget, defense needs should be the first items provided for. This does not necessarily argue that the Iraq War or any particular expenditure was well spent money.
But at this site (http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/charts_S/s7.cfm), you can see a chart of defense spending as a percentage of GDP (the best measure of hwat percentage of our national wealth we are dedicating to any one expense). It suggests that the Afghan and Iraq wars have pushed up defense spending from 3% of GDP to 4% of GDP - hardly a massive plunge into irresponsible expenditure. You are right to note, however, that there is still no reason that the Congress should not have sought to finance this additional expenditure by saving on some other expenditures - this was the fatal flaw of the Republican Congress from 2002-2006, imho.
To follow up on Denver Guy's numbers, the war (or wars) we are fighting now are quite cheap. I read (sorry I can't find the cite) that today's wars are 1% of the economy, while Vietnam was 10% of the economy and WWII was 100% of the economy. Not to mention we still spend a far smaller percentage of our GDP on the military than we did throughout most of the past 60 years, in peace or war time. If you don't like Iraq, just say so--it's a stretch to claim it's fiscally irresponsible.
Yup, looks like you Guys were right about the cost of war as percentage of GDP point. The key idea is: "A half trillion dollars sounds like a pretty big number," said Jay Bryson, a global economist at Wachovia Corp. "But in a $14 trillion economy, it just isn't all that big."
The war is bad.
Post a Comment
<< Home