U.S. federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $8T
watson.brown.edu
watson.brown.edu
We lied about WMDs to cajole and entice other countries to join us in invading Iraq.
We tortured prisoners.
We killed reporters (accidentally) and lied about it (intentionally).
We drone-killed a minor US citizen in a foreign country without a trial.
I watched 9/11 happen with my own eyes and it was incalculably tragic but we've done some very shitty things in return.
No they were not.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/8038/seventytwo-percent-america...
Iraq was a popular war.
Iraq was popular because we were lied to.
Saddam was behind 9/11 so we have to go in there in retribution.
Iraq has WMDs and is going to use them on us so we have to go in there to stop them.
Saddam is attacking and killing his own people so we have to go in there on humanitarian grounds.
Some were opposed, yes.
Using “we” is a proper generalization. Everybody is offended by generalizations today. (See what I did there?) but you can’t talk coherently without them.
The effect is even more dramatic when you presume polls always skew older.
Even if they weren't polled, it's not reasonable to assume that 0% of them would have supported the various responses.
My point is that America in 2003 feels the same to people who were alive then, but blaming Americans alive today for Iraq is like blaming Americans alive in 2003 for being pro-Grenada.
It is possible to use some sort of set theory terminology to avoid misleading people, but then that wouldn't really be "proper" (culturally acceptable).
It's a real conundrum.
If anyone or group actually did “more” they would have been branded a traitor and thrown in prison — or worse.
That kind of thinking is exactly what they want you to think, and, they can't call everyone a traitor and lock everyone up.
Could have done more to stop them. Should have done more to stop them.
I don't think this claim holds up to the evidence. Looking at opinion polls between 9/11 and 2003's invasion of Iraq makes it unclear that a "very large majority" was against the invasion. Here's a quickly-found Gallup poll[0] from October 2002 wherein 53% of polled Americans supported a ground invasion of Iraq.
The American people were misled by government claims about WMDs and handwavy connections between Iraq and 9/11. But that doesn't permit us to retroactively declare that "well, if only the people knew in 2002 what we know now then they would have been against it."
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20171201030755/http://news.gallu...
Can you explain more? If the American people knew they were being lied to in order to create support for a war, why would they support the war? The argument at the time, repeated all over the media, was that the war was necessary because of WMDs. 53% is a narrow majority supporting invasion, you don't think knowing they were being tricked would have caused at least a 5% swing?
In other words, it's okay for politicians to lie because the supporters of those politicians believe they are in on the lie.
Would people have been against it _conditioned on having knowledge from today that was unavailable then_? Possibly, but this hypothetical doesn't move discussion in a useful direction.
Have you protested? Written to your representatives? Contributed to a NGO fighting these things? Etc.
Or did you let your tax money fund this destruction with little opposition?
I'm being harsh, and probably a hypocrite. But it's easy to be against something in words, but do little to change it sitting comfortably and safe at a distance.
Doesn't always work out but I think the odds are better.
Now, I sleep soundly knowing my taxes get wasted on road works instead of death works.
I did. I even almost got arrested on multiple occasions for it.
> Written to your representatives?
Hell, I went to Washington DC and their local offices on multiple occasions and told them to their faces what I thought of them for doing what they were doing.
Didn't do a damn thing, could have done more. Should have done more.
> Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
Protested in the streets in NYC, almost got arrested a few times.
Didn't do a damn bit of difference.
We all could have and should have done more to stop it.
Not security, we somehow left all of our weapons and vehicles behind for the Taliban to use.
We literally threw away decades of goodwill for... nothing. All that happened is our "enemies" are stronger and we are weaker and poorer.
But even then, most of that was captured by only a few families.
It kept on going because, as we saw with Biden, whatever administration made the call would get excoriated for some detail of the withdrawal.
My favorite memory was being on a college campus against the war and reading all the right wing shitheads talk about how great it was gonna be.
Meanwhile all the ghouls from the bush administration are walking free.
As an athiest i often think about if i'm wrong about there being a hell.
It's nice to think Bush and everyone involved will be there for eternity.
In particular, a "track this car" feature that worked against satellite and aerial surveillance was available in software used by those in the military's operations teams. I've poked around in that software to determine that it was definitely buggy, but this did not prevent the feature from being offered to users. I've been assured that users were essentially told "don't click this button that automates watching vehicles and instead do it yourself", but laziness and crisis crunch time of the American exit from Afghanistan makes it very realistic that users were overwhelmed and trying anything to stay on top of things.
I lay those deaths at least partially on software and the cavalier way that life-or-death circumstances are systematically ignored by the defense contractor software industry.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/podcasts/the-daily/drone-...
It is not slavery, as you are correct to point out - it is a regressive reading of Islam and its insistence on removing the sexual from the public space (which is fine - it is in principle a modality of civilization — that takes that stance which is not inherently oppressive of a given sex, it places restrictions on both sexes’ behavior in public space).
A sign of your backwardness is considering women —- decent, moral, upright but lacking a covering tent — as “naked”. But imo, it is not that the woman showing hair is “naked”, rather the eyes that behold are soaked in lust. It is this lust that you can not control, so “let’s control women”.
It is a sad spectacle.
A sign of your bigotry to straw man the argument and then describe the veil that our women wear as "tents". It's a sad spectacle that the "white man's burden" exists to this day.
The women of Afghanistan are the biggest losers of the western worlds withdrawal.
Now wait 50+ years of oppression and you want to sweep it under the rug???
The masks have fallen and exposed the monsters behind them. This whole tragedy for the people of those occupied countries was in western eyes nothing more than continued occupation, resource stealing, weapons testing, and meddling in middle eastern affairs post WWI under the false guise of "freedom" and "democracy". And now they end up defeated and retreating in humiliation.
> get mad
I can't help but feel this is contradictory advice.
> Pearl-clutching is a deliberate bad-faith reaction to a comment and a form of civil POV-pushing. It is done in order to exaggerate the effects and impacts said comment had.
I merely spoke about the atrocities I read about, and expressed my disbelief in how a person could even commit something like that.
When you claim to be "the land of the free" and a "bringer of democracy" you can't be doing a Guantanamo without coming across like a massive hypocrite. Morals and ethics can't be thrown away the second they become mildly inconvenient.
You should be appalled but not surprised. The world is full of monstrous, terrible people, and not just dictators and high up masterminds, but terrible average joes. If you posted a job opportunity that openly said "Job duties: Inflicting torture, rape, and suffering on people we will convince you are bad" you would not have to look far to find job candidates lined up to do it.
> Mr. Nashiri claimed that in 2013, he was subjected to 'rectal feeding' and sodomized with a broom handle by prison staff.
> In 2014, the Obama administration released a 500-page document that detailed some of the CIA’s ‘black site’ program. The document confirms that rectal feeding is a method of torture used by prison staff.
I don’t consider rape, anal feeding, and everything else to be “force feeding prisoners who are hunger striking”.
In fact, we had military and private contractors commit war crimes, and even the ethical folks did things that contributed to millions getting displaced.
We redefined how we classify male civilians. If you’re a male and end up being in the wrong place, you’re just another casualty and classified as a militant.
Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush clan did some truly horrific things. Kidnapping people with any kind of trial. Dropping bombs in Western Pakistan on weddings because there’s some suspected leader of an organization we don’t like, even if they simply aren’t terrorists but don’t want America in the region.
Four that we admit to. I'd be surprised if the real number were not higher.
It’s a point raised and emphasized because it’s the only chance we have to try to get people to care about the atrocious things we’re doing. Even something as simple and clear as this line has been very ineffective in bringing about any change.
There is no such restriction on non-Americans.
> We drone-killed a minor US citizen in a foreign country without a trial.
I don't think investing in more Hydro is a good option personally. Too much environmental consequence from flooding the massive areas required.
8T 20 years ago would not have accelerated the pace of solar/wind much and it's dubious if it would even be useful today, there are better solutions (nuclear).
Similar with moon/mars colony. We don't lack the money for a mars shot, we could do it pretty cheaply, we just lack the will to do it. At this point Musk will assuredly get there first and cheaper.
Some of the violence is directly done by us, some encouraged by us and some of it is natively fomented --I don't care. Bring us all back home and let the world duke it out for themselves.
Imagine what we could have done for ourselves with $8T dollars (child development, motherhood, infrastructure, education)! No, instead we piss it on wars.
Damned Neocons.
We don't need to be the world's "daddy". Countries have to figure things out for themselves. It's like trying to tell a kid how to grow up based on one's own experience. It doesn't work, kids have to figure things out for themselves.
If one country wants to have a violent theocratic dictatorship and another a violent communist dictatorship, and another just thinks we're pigs, you know what: let them work it out. Maybe it takes 100 years. Let them write their own history.
Such as "let Russia squash Ukraine"?
If the current world order is reconfigured, America has the most to lose.
I know that no world order is forever, the US has a vested interest in the stability of the current world order and keep it as long as possible.
For the same reason as always - because it's in America's interest to get in the way.
Like the federal debt, we always look at only half the balance sheet to maximize sensationalism.
[edit] with this type of geopolitical posturing especially, it's very difficult to calculate the benefits of everything that didn't happen as a result of your intervention, so it's especially easy to ignore. Just like investing in unit testing. How many incidents didn't happen because of the tests you wrote - and how much did that save the company? The set is probably uncountable, but we do generally accept that it's greater than zero.
I have a hard time understanding that point of view, so your insights would be helpful
If America wants to be great again, it will do so through leadership, not through self-centered isolationism. Should a gap be created, the likes of Russia and China will fill it. Is that the world leadership you want?
(Of course, fighting wars so one can remain combat-ready is the very definition of treating other people as means to an end rather than as ends in themselves, and so very much offends against the moral sensibility. But the question here is about self-interest.)
We literally have all of history as an example of how bad Afghanistan invasions go for the invader. One prime example being the Soviet Union utterly failing just ~two decades prior.
>Have to give credit where credit's due.
The only credit due is that which the Hague would give.
It's very seductive to believe that the world is a nice place and none of its issues will ever show up at our doorstep if we just leave the rest of the world alone. But sadly the world will always have strong powers and they will set the rules. I'd rather be on the winning team. If someone is going to be the world police/power-broker I want it to be us.
That's not to say we are perfect or don't need to improve. The US is deeply flawed and has caused a lot of trouble over the last century. But I'd rather be in the position we're in now vs having Russia or China be the power-broker with an even greater list of failures and abuses.
"America can't solve any of the world's problems" isn't the only possible logical conclusion from that fact, though.
Because free and open democracies are not the default way countries govern themselves.
And megalomaniacs like Putin who desire for a return to glory days do need someone of equal weight to push back.
The USA doesn't need to, but it is locked into treaties requiring it to defend 1/3 of the world's people.
If this is what victory looks like, I would hate to see defeat.
The US makes different to subsidy or protection choices with their own effects. selective agriculture is subsidized and insured while things like Trucks are protected - inflating the size, pollution footprint, and selection of vehicles in the US.
We also have an indirect manufacturing & tech subsidy through military spending. Not super efficient at developing our economy but not a small effect either.
I support where the US is rethinking the balance of subsidy and protection on computer chips but wish some of the existing ossified decisions were revisited or rebalanced.
Correct. Their industrial subsidies come at the expense of China's domestic spending ability. Many pundits, including the one I linked, believe that China must allow increased domestic demand but this is politically unfavorable in China due to the entrenched interests and beliefs in the necessity of a strong industrial base.
Thanks to compounding, if they have consistently spent half as much as "they should" elsewhere for decades, there is some moment where they will reach more absolute domestic spending without ever raising that rate to where it "should" be.
Off the top of my head, I'll say that China is making a trade-off to subsidize manufacturing at the expense of wages. This can take the form of 'malinvestment' or misallocation of capital(see the ghost cities, trains to nowhere, "Belt and Road" malinvestment, etc) which boost manufacturing in the short term while leaving little benefits in the long term. It also leaves China with weak domestic consumption so more of the GDP growth must be derived from manufacturing in order to meet CCP growth targets.
Further, the subsidies come at the expense of efficiency. For instance, China leads the world in cotton subsidies despite having 4x competing countries' costs to grow cotton. These subsidies do not necessarily translate into some future benefit for Chinese citizens.
Related: https://www.dw.com/en/china-will-more-domestic-consumption-b...
There was no boycott of US products or banning of US athletes. In fact the US itself "boycotted" the use of the word "French fryes" (in certain government buildings) because the French didn't want to play along renaming them to "freedom fryes".
"public support ranging from 55% to 75%, with relatively little fluctuation"
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/how-stron...
https://news.gallup.com/poll/8038/seventytwo-percent-america...
Hopefully the world has learnt not to repeat Iraq.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United...
How could you possibly know that this is the reason?
What is it about these topics that cause people to think this way? Imagine the mess we'd have if we wrote software using this quality/form of logic, it might be as big of a mess as the political world.
Probably explains a lot of the inflation we have seen recently. Gotta pay for it somehow, one way is to make each dollar worth less. It's a stealth tax increase.
What changed with the "free" money handouts is that the price point that market can bear increased resulting in higher profit margins than before. Supply limitations and shortages played a part as well as increased cash and hence demand from people.
As this excess savings and money dries out, the equilibrium price point will move the profit margins back to long term averages although it is a slow process.
If you go with 40 million folks, we could have just given 200k to each person instead of killing/displacing them. Its even more wild than I imagined.
I'm not saying our system is perfect either; we need to get prices under control and incentivize actual competition in the healthcare industry.
Consider the number of nursing strikes recently and it's clear that the system is getting much worse.
The UK is not too hot either, third party private insurance is growing to make up for the NHS shortcomings
Edit0: As I thought, nothing really
Canadians are deeply in debt. Mostly mortgages. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-hou...
Causing: house prices and rent to be unaffordable for the median income person. As a result, I have several friends who are exploring leaving the country. Especially if you have children, they will likely never be able to afford a home nearby themselves without help. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/world/canada/canada-real-... https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rentals-august-1.6963839
Inflation isn't stopping. It's most commonly reflected in the grocery prices. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/world/canada/loblaws-groc...
As a result of the above, and the fact that if the Bank of Canada did not keep the prime rate in line with the USA (we have pretty much always raised our prime rates in step with the USA) = huge cuts into the disposable income / lifestyle of Canadians. Some people say we are already in a per capita recession. https://www.movesmartly.com/articles/why-the-bank-of-canada-... https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-households-get-left-behi...
To compound this problem, as our working population ages, in order to keep our age dependency ratio healthy, we are allowing a million+ immigrants a year in. Please don't flame me, I don't have an opinion, this is a fact and a choice, and it has consequences. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/greenpa...
Trudeau is many things, but a person who has ever needed to worry about money isn't one of them. Both Canada and Ontario (the most populous province) are deeply in debt. Alberta, who's oil wealth largely makes this country function, are making noises about separation, especially about their portion of the CPP, the Canadian Pension Plan that covers all Canadians. Alberta is kind of Canada's Texas (Conservative + oil wealthy) but they have far less influence in Federal politics than Texas does. AFAIK, I might be wrong about that. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-... https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-canada-inte... https://www.moneysense.ca/save/retirement/pensions/alberta-p...
All of these are leading towards a housing and / or financial crisis and / or currency crisis. Whichever comes first. There are tent cities and homeless in most large urban areas, and, as this is Canada, this winter will be brutal. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-...
Smaller problem: we have socialized medicine, but you likely can't get a doctor. Good luck getting a referral. We are exploring private practice charging fees. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/05/world/canada/canada-famil... https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/would-you-pay-300-a-year-for-q...
I know that the general opinion of Canada is that nothing ever happens, and to an extent that was largely true. I believe the next few years will be very difficult for Canadians, and, incredibly, given that Canadians use more energy per capita than the Americans, it will be a difficult transition to a lower energy use profile.
Being Canadian I am aware of these things, but I do feel like a frog in a pot - it didn't seem that critical. I agree with you about the next few years being very difficult. I'm in Quebec (woohoo hydro) and am ressourceful enough not to be worried for myself, but it won't be easy for most.
I was not aware of the separatist rumblings in the west, I'll look it up.
State provided insurance coverage was expanded but that expansion is ending over the next year, however 20 years after 9/11 the military and intelligence apparatus put in place is still intact.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/child-poverty-increases-sh...
> In 2021, as the economy reeled from the pandemic, a one-year expansion of the child tax credit led to a historic 46 percent decline in the child poverty rate. But new census data shows a dramatic reversal with the rate of children in poverty skyrocketing in 2022. Experts say it’s due to the end of pandemic-era safety net policies and inflation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/25/us/politics/child-tax-cre... cites the cost of that expansion as $100B.
What's stopping the US from solving these incredible social, scientific etc problems isn't money. It's the will of the people in particular politicians. Many of whom are themselves taking money by people and companies who benefit from these problems being unsolved.
Also, the Taliban offered an unconditional surrender but Bush rejected it.
Now, instead, we have tens of thousands of young men who watched their little brother/sister/cousin/mother/father get blown up by American machinery, many of whom have never heard of 9/11.
It's just unfathomably bad.
Citation seriously needed because Wikipedia says the exact opposite.
> People using CIA and FBI computers have edited entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia on topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo prison, according to a new tracing program.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-wikipedia/cia-fb...
> It was in the waning days of November 2001 that Taliban leaders began to reach out to Hamid Karzai, who would soon become the interim president of Afghanistan: They wanted to make a deal.
> “The Taliban were completely defeated, they had no demands, except amnesty,” recalled Barnett Rubin, who worked with the United Nations’ political team in Afghanistan at the time.
> Messengers shuttled back and forth between Mr. Karzai and the headquarters of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in Kandahar. Mr. Karzai envisioned a Taliban surrender that would keep the militants from playing any significant role in the country’s future.
> But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out forever, was in no mood for a deal.
> “The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders,” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a news conference at the time, adding that the Americans had no interest in leaving Mullah Omar to live out his days anywhere in Afghanistan. The United States wanted him captured or dead.
I assume it was also because the primary objective - catching bin Laden - had not been achieved.
Taliban offered to extradite bin laden to a third neutral country where he would get a fair trial provided us provide evidence of his built.
Bush rejected it.
I was one of the many people who protested the Iraq War. In fact, the final protest I attended in February 2003 was the largest single-day protest in American history (though the first Women's March may have beat it). Not that it did any good. Both political parties and every ratings-hungry corner of the media was cheerleading the march to war. CNN must have had staff working overtime to make all those war-themed transition graphics.
And the world (India & China mainly) got to enjoy super cheap oil and grow at unprecedented rates.
So yeah everyone hates wars, everyone apart from the victims seem to like the benefits.
This is the same mentality that a common thief has.
"I'm just creating jobs for repair men!"
The infrastructure destroyed by the US is probably of near zero value, given that they were fighting against failed states. Yugoslavia being the exception in this.
Which is why I hate the original article. Money is not the reason why waging war is bad.
It’s the loss of human lives and well being. And that does not have a dollar value. The price of the life of my kid is infinite.
It's not inaccurate to call things paid for by the federal government (which yes, are indeed funded by your tax dollars) the "federal price tag".
You got robbed. Twice.
For the normal people out there who can't quite process numbers this big, let's put that in cognizable terms.
The US has an estimated 580,000 homeless people. If I'm understanding this all correctly, $8T would buy each and every one of those people a 13.8 million dollar mansion.
Bruh.
I was quite clear on the tense of the statement: "The US has..." etc.
This is a ridiculous statistic however you cut it. Multiple the homeless stat by 20 (a vast overestimate) and you STILL give every one of them a ridic house. What's going on here is unfathomably evil.
George Carlin would have had fun with that.
But we have been the “law and order” and “free trade” guys. That doesn’t necessarily mean “good”, and I question whether our commitment to free trade was anything other than a way to put pressure on the USSR’s economy. Still, “law and order” can at least guarantee a measure of peace.
But I think with Iraq we burned that reputation away - it’s gone. Now we’re just some bitter friendless policeman with too many guns who’s really just riding out of what’s left of the momentum produced by our past global position.
It's been a bit more than 8000 days since 9/11. So the US federal government spent about $1BN/day, or about $3 per person per day. So, from all the taxes I've been paying to the US government over all these years, they have taken $3 each day and allocated it to wars. If that's the case, there's a good chance I spent more money at Starbucks over the same period.
If there are some heavily funded schools that perform badly, that isn't an argument that kids in underfunded schools should go hungry.
These studies really cherry pick scenarios to advance the agenda that we should get rid of public schools so we can have private religious schools.
Unfortunately, even though OBL is dead, he won the war.
There is some low-hanging fruit, given that a significant portion of our military will likely be replaced by drones over the next couple decades, but we still have significant entitlement programs that need to be paid for.
My advice to folks is go heavy into your Roth IRA. Taxes are only going up, and, assuming no one in government figures out a way to claw back the tax-free returns on a Roth, you're going to need the tax relief.
That is not an analysis of whether it could've been spent better, just a statement about war costs generally. Clearly not a total war at all. Barely a partial one.
Obviously there's differences in methodology etc. but seems to be the same ballpark. Not sure I'd call WWII cheap.
[0]: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2020/february/war-...
Yes, this would lead to a libertarian state.
9/11/2001 was 22 years ago
8T/22 years means 360B/year USD
The US military expenses covers basically the global military security needs of all of the Americas and de facto a large percentage of Western Europe/EU, ASEAN, etc.. Let’s just say 1 Billion people who haven’t experienced major World War level conflict against their territory or against their civilians since 9/11 (or, for that matter, since WWII). The bill for US citizens for that over the last 22 years has been roughly $360/yr, USD. (There have been armed conflicts in the period and much suffering as a result. But there hasn’t been real worldwide suffering…World War level suffering.)
Imagine a US family in 1943. Someone offers to bring their loved ones home that very day from the moronic European/Asian conflicts safe and sound. Will cost them, say, $100/yr head tax (could call it Security as a Subscription but what an absurd acronym that would make). $100 was a lot of money in 1943, but a guarantee of no orphans, no widows, no funerals, no rations, no torture, no struggles, no threats to the Four Freedoms. Every single family in the US in 1943 would have taken that offer. And they would, and do, take that offer every year up to the present. And it has worked (for the most part). Certainly for the Americas, EU, Japan, British Commonwealth, ASEAN,…
Now imagine making the offer to those in concentration camps in 1943. Those conscripted to serve the Nazis or the Imperial Japanese empire. Those in occupied territories. They’d be lining up in droves to pay (instead of lining up to be fed starvation rations, be gassed, be forced to work in factories until they died, etc.). They’d die for the opportunity (instead of, you know, just dying).
Today’s “the West’s” military-industrial complex isn’t a perfect system and if the Department of State screws up the results are often haphazard and cruel. (Yeah, I know, let’s blame the State department.) But attempts at global political perfection haven’t succeeded in the modern era. One time they called it The War to End All Wars. Or was it the Glorious Communist Global Revolution (cf. pogroms, gulags, Mao’s great famine, Cultural Revolution, anything re: Cambodia, etc.). Sounds like a great objective to have, but when it fails in implementation, it fails catastrophically…only slightly better than the World War option, but without the psychopolitical cleansing that comes with deep trauma that does finally end.
And let’s not bring up what nuclear technologies bring to a future World War party. Really, let’s not. Weapons of policy, not of war.
From a historical perspective, it’s quite the deal the developed world has gotten in the 21st Century for their $8T. (Didn’t read the article, I assume this was their conclusion.)
I've heard similar justification for farm subsidies; paying them not to grow food, to keep prices sufficiently high. It seems wasteful until you compare it to the regular cycle of famines humanity has dealt with to this point. Turns out paying for extra unused capacity is tremendously valuable.