The high cost of "Iraqi Freedom" : One trillion dollars of your money!

[iconoclastNYC]

NEW STUDY SUGGESTS ECONOMIC COST OF IRAQ WAR MUCH LARGER THAN PREVIOUSLY RECOGNIZED

A new study by two leading academic experts suggests that the costs of the Iraq war will be substantially higher than previously reckoned. In a paper presented to this week’s Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting in Boston MA., Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes and Columbia University Professor and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz calculate that the war is likely to cost the United States a minimum of nearly one trillion dollars and potentially over $2 trillion.

The study expands on traditional budgetary estimates by including costs such as lifetime disability and health care for the over16,000 injured, one fifth of whom have serious brain or spinal injuries. It then goes on to analyze the costs to the economy, including the economic value of lives lost and the impact of factors such as higher oil prices that can be partly attributed to the conflict in Iraq. The paper also calculates the impact on the economy if a proportion of the money spent on the Iraq war were spent in other ways, including on investments in the United States

“Shortly before the war, when Administration economist Larry Lindsey suggested that the costs might range between $100 and $200 billion, Administration spokesmen quickly distanced themselves from those numbers,” points out Professor Stiglitz. “But in retrospect, it appears that Lindsey’s numbers represented a gross underestimate of the actual costs.”

The Allied Social Sciences Association meeting is attended by the nation’s leading economists and social scientists. It is sponsored jointly by the American Economic Association and the Economists for Peace and Security.

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The Democrats need to start talking directly to the American people about budget priorities in the manner in which Ross Perot did.

Your bill for the Iraq is now due : $3,333 for each living person in the USA.

How about this for a poll question:

Would you have supported the invasion of Iraq for the sole purposes "spreading democracy" knowing that it was going to cost you and everyone else in the country $3,333 each?

[Loonman]

1. Sorry, I'll take my 3 grand

If the Iraqis wanted freedom badly enough, they should have gotten it for themselves.

[Karenina]

8. You seem to forget that

the U.S. INVADED Iraq. With YOUR tacit approval...

[wryter2000]

2. Do you have a link or a citation for this?

I'd like to rub some freeper faux-economist noses in this.

[iconoclastNYC]

7. Ooops

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2006/1/5/11510/30624

[wryter2000]

9. Thanks! n/t

n/t

[daleanime]

3. And Bush still wants...

to give himself another tax cut.

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. The idiot who claimed that it would cost 3 billion now runs the world bank

It's the world of the bizarros.

[Rambis]

5. Just think High speed rail and health care for everyone!

Jobs galore for railway workers across the nation and everyone can go the the doctor- Psych!

[PDJane]

6. I wonder.............

That can't be counting the 2.3 trillion dollars that the Pentagon has misplaced............