Thursday, September 4, 2008

The cost of war

Data on the cost of US Wars are here. (These data only include military costs, total costs are likely to be higher, these are Stiglitz's estimates of the costs of the war in Iraq)
The figures are adjusted for inflation, suggesting that the Iraq war is already close to being the 2nd most expensive war in US history (only $20 billion away from the Vietnam war). Moreover, the Iraq war costs about $130 billion per year, the Vietnam War costed about $65 billion per year (WWII costed about $1 trillion per year). I don't know whether these are marginal costs (i.e., over and above normal military expenditure in time of peace) or total costs.
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