When Talk of Guns and Butter Includes Lives Lost (Uchitelle, NYT)

[swag]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/business/yourmoney/15view.html

By Louis Uchitelle

AS the toll of American dead and wounded mounts in Iraq, some economists are arguing that the war's costs, broadly measured, far outweigh its benefits.

Studies of previous wars focused on the huge outlays for military operations. That is still a big concern, along with the collateral impact on such things as oil prices, economic growth and interest on the debt run up to pay for the war. Now some economists have added in the dollar value of a life lost in combat, and that has fed antiwar sentiment.
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The newest research was a paper posted last week on the Web (www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/cost_of_war_in_iraq.pdf) by two antiwar Democrats from the Clinton administration: Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University and Linda Bilmes, now at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Their upper-end, long-term cost estimate tops $1 trillion, based on the death and damage caused by the war to date. They assumed an American presence in Iraq through at least 2010, and their estimate includes the war's contribution to higher domestic petroleum prices. They also argue that while military spending has contributed to economic growth, that growth would have been greater if the outlays had gone instead to highways, schools, civilian research and other more productive investment.
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The old way of valuing life calculated the present value of lost earnings, a standard still used by the courts to compensate accident victims, generally awarding $500,000 a victim, at most. Mr. Viscusi, however, found that Americans tend to value risk differently. He found that society pays people an additional $700 a year, on average, to take on risky work in hazardous occupations. Given one death per 10,000 risk-takers, on average, the cost to society adds up to $7 million for each life lost, according to Mr. Viscusi's calculation. Mr. Stiglitz and Ms. Bilmes reduced this number to about $6 million, keeping their estimate on the conservative side, as they put it.

None of the heroism or sacrifice for country shows up in the recent research, and for a reason.

"We did not have to fight this war, and we did not have to go to war when we did," Mr. Stiglitz said. "We could have waited until we had more safe body armor and we chose not to wait."

[Demeter]

1. This Was Obvious From Day Minus One

Nice of the economists to catch up with regular folks.