Apart from its tragic human toll, the Iraq War will be staggeringly expensive in financial terms. In The Three Trillion Dollar War, Nobel Prize winnerJoseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda J. Bilmes cast a spotlight on expense items that have been hidden from the U.S. taxpayer, including not only big-ticket items like replacing military equipment (being used up at six times the peacetime rate) but also the cost of caring for thousands of wounded veterans—for the rest of their lives. Shifting to a global focus, the authors investigate the cost in lives and economic damage within Iraq and the region. Finally, with the chilling precision of an actuary, the authors measure what the U.S. taxpayer’s money would have produced if instead it had been invested in the further growth of the U.S. economy. Written in language as simple as the details are disturbing, this book will forever change the way we think about the war.
miércoles, 13 de mayo de 2009
THE TREE TRILLION DOLLAR WAR
THE TRUE COST OF THE IRAQ conflict
Lea una interesante nota en el periódico británico The Guardian
$3 trillion may be too low
Notwithstanding President Bush's response, our original estimate of the cost of the Iraq war was too conservative: in reality, it will be much higher.
