The Economic Costs of the Iraq War - version 2

I was drinking a chocolate shake at Johnny Rocket's and rethought this post. I have made some amendments.

Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz have an interesting paper, The Economic Costs of the Iraq War, posted on the Internet. Their conservative estimate is one trillion dollars. Their moderate estimate is 1.9 trillion dollars. Within their estimates they factor in human costs such as health care for veterans and survivors benefits.

William D. Nordhaus published a very good cost estimate before the war that estimated it at one trillion dollars if everything did not go as planned, or more accurately, hoped for. I was surprised at how little attention the paper got.

Putting an economic cost on war might seem a brutal way to look at it. It should be done everytime people deliberate on starting a war. There is something very sobering about putting a price on a human life. I wonder how many Americans would have supported the war if they had known that it would take an unspecified amount of time and at least trillion dollars or more.

It seems as though the unrealistic hope is always that the troops will be home by Christmas when war starts. It is rarely the case that they are.