The Guardian reports that Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes estimate the cost to the US of the “war on terror” will be between one and two trillion dollars. Although there is almost no indication that the war on terror has saved any lives (and documented evidence that it has killed thousands), let’s suppose for the sake of argument that over the length of the war it saved 4000 lives at a cost of one trillion dollars. That’s a cost of $250 million per life saved.
For comparison, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that in the year 2000, there were 3,482 unintentional drownings in the US. I suspect that the US government could cut that number in half by spending far less than 100 million dollars a year on safety and education programs, for a cost of less than $60,000 per life saved. In other words, that would be a 4000 times more cost effective use of taxpayers money.
There were over 40,000 fatailities in automobile accidents in 1999. If the Federal Government spent an additional 50 million dollars a year on auto safety programs of various sorts, they could probably reduce this number by at least 10%. That would be 20,000 times more cost effective than the war on terror.
The biggest problem with the war on terror is that there is no way it can be won, so it is completely open-ended. Since the government can use it as a justification to grab more power and infringe more civil liberties over time, they have a clear motive to continue this so-called war indefinitely. They like to scare the public by telling us that our enemies are fanatics, and that is why we must spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the war. But since fanatics are by definition not rational, it doesn’t matter how much money we pour down that rathole. We won’t be any safer, and there will still be terrorists. In fact, it seems likely that the more money we spend bombing other countries and interfering in their governments, the more terrorists there will be.
When I saw Terry Gilliam’s film “Brazil” in 1987, I thought it was fiction, not prophecy. Sigh.
The War on Terror is not cost-effective
The Guardian reports that Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes estimate the cost to the US of the “war on terror” will be between one and two trillion dollars. Although there is almost no indication that the war on terror has saved any lives (and documented evidence that it has killed thousands), let’s suppose for the sake of argument that over the length of the war it saved 4000 lives at a cost of one trillion dollars. That’s a cost of $250 million per life saved.
For comparison, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that in the year 2000, there were 3,482 unintentional drownings in the US. I suspect that the US government could cut that number in half by spending far less than 100 million dollars a year on safety and education programs, for a cost of less than $60,000 per life saved. In other words, that would be a 4000 times more cost effective use of taxpayers money.
There were over 40,000 fatailities in automobile accidents in 1999. If the Federal Government spent an additional 50 million dollars a year on auto safety programs of various sorts, they could probably reduce this number by at least 10%. That would be 20,000 times more cost effective than the war on terror.
The biggest problem with the war on terror is that there is no way it can be won, so it is completely open-ended. Since the government can use it as a justification to grab more power and infringe more civil liberties over time, they have a clear motive to continue this so-called war indefinitely. They like to scare the public by telling us that our enemies are fanatics, and that is why we must spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the war. But since fanatics are by definition not rational, it doesn’t matter how much money we pour down that rathole. We won’t be any safer, and there will still be terrorists. In fact, it seems likely that the more money we spend bombing other countries and interfering in their governments, the more terrorists there will be.
When I saw Terry Gilliam’s film “Brazil” in 1987, I thought it was fiction, not prophecy. Sigh.