The NYT has a chart showing what the US and the world have foregone as a result of the money spent on the Iraq war. I had a go at the same topic last year.
4 thoughts on “Opportunity cost”
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John Quiggin 
Link is broken as posted.
Thinking about the last 3 years and Bush’s obvious policy failures always makes me think about moving far, far away from my DC/VA (Arlington, VA) location. I have no interest in being blown up.
The money being spent is being funded by debt. Rather than spending it on Homeland Security, not asking for it from creditors would be a viable option as well.
Cameron Riley
I like Prof. Quiggin’s suggestions for spending the money (on health care and foreign aid) much better than the NYT’s, which are all military and security-related and would increase public welfare not a whit. We could all profit from re-reading Seymour Melman’s analysis of the “permanent war economy” in his book of that name published in 1974. He provides a long list of alternative uses for the money being spent on war in those high and far-off days. But Prof. Quiggin’s 2003 Financial Review piece makes the mistake of saying, in effect, that war is not cost-effective. Once again, he is forgetting to ask the “cost-effective for whom?” question. Like environmental destruction, war is very cost-effective for some people. Melman attemped an analysis of this, and perhaps it is time to re-do it, for both war and the environment.
Opportunity cost of the war in Iraq
John Quiggan has pointed to an excellent chart from the NYT showing how the US$144 billion spent invading Iraq – so far – might have been applied to other pressing “war on terror” applications. The chart reads to me like…