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Economic costs of war

watson.brown.edu

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Re: Economic costs of war

#181

Post by khuey »

redandblack wrote: post #179
NonContro wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of cutting costs, the way we exited Afghanistan is the best way to do it. Pull out overnight, abandon all the equipment, and the rapid takeover by the Taliban means we don't need to keep running bombing missions to support a slowly retreating national army. In that regard I'd see the current situation as a success, not a failure. It also seems like the Taliban have chilled out a bit, since we're not seeing w…

in that sense Biden's legacy is cleaning up the mess and not leaving it to the future president

He was pretty adamant about that in his speech today.

Re: Economic costs of war

#182

Post by handedness »

ivalm wrote: post #175
sgregnt wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this is not as simple as this. It's a nice appeal but very removed from reality. If you didn't have strong enough army to protect you, then you might loose, schools hospitals and what not... Unfortunatly, in a real world a war is not a maybe question but a when question. The question is what amount of defense expenditure is adequate? And that a political question, with no right or wrong answers that for the vo…

We spend more on the military than the next few biggest spenders combined.

None of whom guarantee global free trade, which is awfully expensive:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640

Re: Economic costs of war

#183

Post by redandblack »

hamburgerwah wrote: post #167
el_jay wrote: post #118

To those here riffing on the theme of “this misrepresents the volume and beneficiaries of the transactions involved” - you’re not wrong. Accurate representation of public info like this is a top organisational problem for our species at the moment. But I do think you miss the point, so aptly put by Mr Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a thef…

There is no doubt that a lot has been misspent, trillions almost certainly but let's not be naive and say that it could have magically been spent on "better more sensible things" by the same people who misspent it in the first place (congress) and second let's all appreciate that perhaps 1 or 2 trillion a year, perhaps more, is the cost of western civilization not being immediately stomped out by very bad people like…

in what way is nazi-china different from fascist neo-cons/neo-liberals. it is all a projection of power - and the victims are uncounted and faceless

Re: Economic costs of war

#184

Post by sgregnt »

SteveNuts wrote: post #169
sgregnt wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this is not as simple as this. It's a nice appeal but very removed from reality. If you didn't have strong enough army to protect you, then you might loose, schools hospitals and what not... Unfortunatly, in a real world a war is not a maybe question but a when question. The question is what amount of defense expenditure is adequate? And that a political question, with no right or wrong answers that for the vo…

What you say is true, but I think people get pissed off when comparing US Military spending vs... basically the entirety of the world https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison This is so far beyond overkill it's sickening.

Not sure how this relates to what I wrote? Apparently USA voters do think the spending is adequate... or do you have a better way to decide on this? On a tangential: We can also try to compare the cost of 1 mile of subway in NY vs 1 mile in Shanghai. I didn't check but I would assume NY cost would be more than double. Services in US cost a lot. US innovates and a lot of other countries copy... while it seems that China spending is not that far behind US.

Re: Economic costs of war

#185

Post by User23 »

epistasis wrote: post #143
throwthere wrote: post #18

This title is completely wrong. The article estimates the US has accumulated around $2 trillion in war debt as of 2020. It goes on to estimate interest payments will equal $2 trillion by 2030 and $6.4 trillion by 2050.

The US prints two kinds of money: 1) dollars, which are subject to inflation and decrease in value over time, and 2) bonds, which accumulate in dollar value over time, usually in front of inflation. So because we spent bonds instead of spending dollars, we can not take their dollar value as the cost, because that's most definitely not what we printed for these.

Not exactly. The Federal Reserve and the US Treasury do a dance where the Treasury tells the Fed how many dollars it needs and then creates notes, bills, and bonds in the desired amount. It then performs a simple asset swap with the Fed to receive reserves in exchange for those bonds. This is slightly obfuscated by the primary dealer auction process, but in extremis the Fed can and will just buy the bonds itself. This never happens because for some reason the private banks that are primary dealers don't choose to give away free seigniorage money.

Re: Economic costs of war

#186

Post by [deleted] »

valzam wrote: post #140
Retric wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read up what happens when countries start creating money from thin air rather than borrow it. Very bad things happen. 100 quintillion (10^20) pengő, the largest denomination bill ever issued, Hungary, 1946.

Well, apparently they become economic superpowers because that is what all powerful nations with monetary sovereignty and fiat money have been doing under the guise of government debt. Hyperinflation largely happens in countries where the money wasn't really worth much to begin with because it's value was pegged to the price of gold or other currencies. Or because most of the economy functioned on foreign currency an…

[deleted]

Re: Economic costs of war

#187

Post by babesh »

koolba wrote: post #8
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignore money. Think in terms of stuff. Metal that gets put into Humvees can't be put into something else. We threw away an insane amount of stuff. And think in terms of people. People that spend a year as soldiers in Afghanistan can't spend that year doing something else. We threw an insane amount of people-time, and a tragically insane amount of people. There is an opportunity cost in terms of both stuff and people.…

> People that spend a year as soldiers in Afghanistan can't spend that year doing something else. The greatest asset the US has built up over the past twenty or so years fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is a reserve of soldiers with real world military experience. I’m not saying it justifies the cost. Far from it. But it’s not a complete wash from a mid term strategic analysis.

https://youtu.be/sUndKrDbgD0

Some military pilots talking about Afghanistan

- drove people out

- airframe lifetimes consumed

- people not wanting to sign up

Re: Economic costs of war

#190

Post by toomuchtodo »

dougmwne wrote: post #164
pessimizer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare spending is currently $3-4 trillion a year. The important number is the difference between M4A and the status quo, not total spending. The sleazy hacks quoting him intentionally equivocated about this.

How can this be so damn expensive? That's 1,000 a month for every single adult and child in the USA. We must be seriously mismanaging our healthcare.

Yes. Most expensive but poor quality overall.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-dozen-facts-about-the-e... (“A dozen facts about the economics of the US health-care system”)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/05/global-healt... (“The United States has the worst health-care system overall among 11 high-income countries, even though it spends the highest proportion of its gross domestic product on health care, according to research by the Commonwealth Fund.”)

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