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You are here: Home / Jane’s prediction

Jane’s prediction

by DougJ|  August 17, 20101:30 am| 36 Comments

This post is in: Going Galt, Our Failed Media Experiment, Technically True but Collectively Nonsense

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Her calculator didn’t go into the billions then either (via ginandtacos, which conducts a thorough Fisking):

But trillions? US GDP is roughly $10 trillion. Alterman is saying that over the long run, this war is going to cost us at least 20% of GDP. That’s nuts, and it’s not the first time I’ve seen those sorts of numbers around.

[….]

Thus, Eric Alterman is enabled to claim that the cost to the US taxpayer will be over $2t, even though most of the larger costs cited by Galbraith aren’t going to be borne by Americans either directly or indirectly, but by Iraqi oil.6 That’s the oil that will be able to flow freely for the first time in ten years because of this war — and the revenue from which will flow to the Iraqi people for the first time in a decade.

The war will certainly cost more than the $60b and change that the President is asking for. But it is not going to run us several trillion dollars (though even if it did, that would work out to less than 0.1% of GDP over the next 20 years.) I don’t know how much more, and neither does anyone else, although I’m sure the military has better guesses than I could make. It’s important to think about the economic cost of the war — the pro-war side has mostly dropped the ball on this, and it’s an important calculation when we consider whether or not to go. But making up ridiculous numbers in order to support your predisposition isn’t helpful — and when the war doesn’t cost us $2t, people are going to remember that the next time you talk about the costs of a program you don’t like.

Estimates of the cost of the Iraq War are in the one to three trillion dollar range, so $2 trillion is right in the sweet spot.

But what do I know? I’ve never worked at a start-up and I don’t have three MBAs.

Doubt this will make it into Conor Friedersdorf’s lil’ round-up of mistaken Iraq War predictions.

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Reader Interactions

36Comments

  1. 1.

    MikeJ

    August 17, 2010 at 1:33 am

    Silly rabbit, wars are free.

  2. 2.

    MattR

    August 17, 2010 at 1:43 am

    But making up ridiculous numbers in order to support your predisposition isn’t helpful—and when the war doesn’t cost us $2t, people are going to remember that the next time you talk about the costs of a program you don’t like.

    Of course since it was McMegan and her friends that were so wrong about the cost of the war, she will ignore her own conclusion and continue to flog the costs of a health care bill that she does not like.

  3. 3.

    MikeJ

    August 17, 2010 at 1:47 am

    @MattR: Or use the old “wrong answer for the right reason” and pretend that’s better than being right.

  4. 4.

    Linkmeister

    August 17, 2010 at 1:51 am

    I have worked at a startup. In fact, I’ve worked at two. In each the costs far exceeded expectations. If she’s really worked at one, either she was really lucky in its circumstances or she’s lying through her teeth.

  5. 5.

    Ash Can

    August 17, 2010 at 1:55 am

    That’s the oil that will be able to flow freely for the first time in ten years because of this war

    Fabulous. Wonderful. I would dearly love to be proven wrong about the cost of this war, believe me. So bring that oil flow and revenue stream on. Go ahead. I’m waiting.

  6. 6.

    MattR

    August 17, 2010 at 2:02 am

    There really is so much fail jammed into a single post and ginandtacos does a nice job of deconstructing it, but I wanted to point out one other example of McMegan understimating a different cost of the war.

    He conflates all sorts of costs into one big amorphous bundle. He only looks at costs on one side; for example, discussing the cost in lives of the war, without discussing the cost in lives of Saddaam’s regime and the sanctions that are the likely alternative to the war. If we kill 300 Iraqi civilians and 300 American troops ousting Saddaam, and Saddaam’s secret police are murdering 1,000 people a year, and 5,000 people a year are dying from the humanitarian crisis brought on by sanctions, it is not a net “cost” in human lives.

    The only thing I am a bit conflicted about is whether the pundits and politicians actually believed it would be so cheap and easy or if they knew it was the only way they could sell the war. My current belief is that quite a few people knew the truth but there were also a ton of useful idiots like McMegan (some of them in the government) who could be counted on to uncritically repeat the talking points of the day.

  7. 7.

    DougJ

    August 17, 2010 at 2:05 am

    @MattR:

    I think those were hypotheticals, not statistics.

  8. 8.

    roshan

    August 17, 2010 at 2:12 am

    And just how much money are we going to sink into this welfare state called Israel?

  9. 9.

    MattR

    August 17, 2010 at 2:17 am

    @DougJ: I think you are being way too charitable if you think that was just a straight up hypothetical designed to point out that it is theoretically possible that the human cost of war could be less than the human cost of doing nothing. The whole article is about how the actual cost is going to be much, much less than the dirty hippies are claiming it will be, so I think it is quite fair to think that the numbers she is throwing out are rough estimates for the casualties she was expecting.

    (EDIT: I’d like to think that any decent writer (and yes, I know we are talking about McMegan) would be clear if they were talking about something purely as a hypothetical and not something that they believe)

  10. 10.

    Joel

    August 17, 2010 at 2:22 am

    McCardle is a disgrace. There’s not much more to be written about her.

  11. 11.

    GregB

    August 17, 2010 at 2:22 am

    It seems like only yesterday when good, God fearing rightwingnuts were boasting about how the US was helping to rebuild scores of religious schools in Iraq for those poor Iraqis who were under Saddam’s evil boot heels.

    Hell George W. even vowed to use US resources to rebuild the blown up Askiraya Shrine.

  12. 12.

    Sleeper

    August 17, 2010 at 2:30 am

    @MattR: I believe DougJ’s comment referred to Ms. McArdle’s sputtering retort to Matt Taibbi about yet another mistake she’d made.

  13. 13.

    roshan

    August 17, 2010 at 2:32 am

    I guess being the propaganda arm of the GOP 24/7/365 wasn’t enough for Fox News, now they are actually funding the GOP.

  14. 14.

    Something Fabulous

    August 17, 2010 at 2:32 am

    I thought there was a really good point (among many) in that G&T post– when she was an “anonymous” blogger, wasn’t it easier for her to make these sweeping assertions and have her readers assume she was speaking from some kind of authority? I am all for eponymity [I am neither Something nor Fabulous– discuss!]; but that was an interesting side-effect I hadn’t thought of.

  15. 15.

    scarshapedstar

    August 17, 2010 at 2:36 am

    US GDP is roughly $10 trillion. Alterman is saying that over the long run, this war is going to cost us at least 20% of GDP. That’s nuts.

    On the other hand, if you ignore the heat-death of the universe and assume infinite time, the cost of the war drops to 0% of GDP, which proves that the neocons were right and wars pay for themselves.

    Now THAT’S Objectivity!

  16. 16.

    MattR

    August 17, 2010 at 2:36 am

    @Sleeper: Ah thank you. Probably a sign it is time for bed.

    (Having hit the google to find the source of the comment, I am not shocked that it was a WaPo chat. I am not sure if that was a DougJ question, but it does not sound snarky enough)

  17. 17.

    Ailuridae

    August 17, 2010 at 3:04 am

    @MattR:

    Nah that’s some classic DougJ snark on McMegan

  18. 18.

    asiangrrlMN

    August 17, 2010 at 3:34 am

    You know, MM2 is just vile. I find myself speechless at how full of shit she is. Really. I don’t know why she in particular rubs me the wrong way, but she does.

  19. 19.

    Napoleon

    August 17, 2010 at 4:43 am

    (via ginandtacos, which conducts a thorough Fisking)

    Hysterical, he/she starts like this:

    Atlantic Monthly comedienne Megan McArdle

  20. 20.

    mclaren

    August 17, 2010 at 5:19 am

    The cost of the Iraq war will surely run to much more than a mere 2 trillion dollars. You people are all foolishly assuming that American military forces will get withdrawn from Iraq sometime in the foreseeable future… Whereas the harsh reality is that we’re going to stay in Iraq for at least the next 6 to 10 years, perhaps longer.

    Figure 100 billion per year. Burn through that over the next 10 years, on top of what we’ve already spent.

    Oh, and that U.S. embassy in Bahgdad? Biggest American embassy in the world. $750 million right there.

    5 to 6 trillion pissed away on the Iraq war by 2020 is my guess. But it’ll probably go higher.

    No matter. Since U.S. military spending, broadly defined to include VA and military pensions plus the CIA, Blackwater (Xe), NRO, NSA and various black projects, runs 1.3 trillion per year, we’re burning through 13% of GDP just on our wars. Every year. Year after year.

    3 years of war? 40% of GDP. Gone. Burned up. Evaporated. Pissed away.

    And of course the U.S. military budget is increasing. Rapidly. So it won't be long till our military expenditure gets to 20%, 25%, 30% of GDP per year. Soviet levels of military spending.

  21. 21.

    JGabriel

    August 17, 2010 at 7:33 am

    Doug, I’m glad to see someone is on top of this. I’ve never understood why so many people seem to just let McMegan skate fee of her Jane Galt past.

    .

  22. 22.

    Some

    August 17, 2010 at 7:35 am

    Roughly $10 trillion? By that standard of ‘rough’, I’m roughly 8′ 9″ tall.

  23. 23.

    Fargus

    August 17, 2010 at 7:41 am

    How has nobody pointed this out?

    But it is not going to run us several trillion dollars (though even if it did, that would work out to less than 0.1% of GDP over the next 20 years.)

    She’s assuming $10 trillion in GDP, and I’m assuming the words “less than” are meant to account for growth in GDP over those hypothetical 20 years. But let’s assume no growth. 20 years of a GDP of $10 trillion is $200 trillion. $2 trillion is 1% of $200 trillion, not 0.1%.

    McMegan really has problems with those order-of-magnitude errors, doesn’t she?

  24. 24.

    Surly Duff

    August 17, 2010 at 7:49 am

    @Fargus:

    You know her calculator doesn’t enough digits to calculate trillions, don’t you?

  25. 25.

    Fargus

    August 17, 2010 at 7:55 am

    @Surly Duff:

    I know that’s her excuse, and it boggles my mind that she’s dumb enough that she thought it’d get people off her back, but Jesus, take out the word “trillion” and the calculations are the same. You can just straight up omit nine of the zeroes and all of the problems.

  26. 26.

    blahblahgurgleblegblah

    August 17, 2010 at 8:13 am

    Where _are_ these war spoils? If we – the American people – are funding this resource war, why have we not seen any spoils from securing these oil fields?

  27. 27.

    P.D.Obvious,Esq.

    August 17, 2010 at 8:29 am

    “Fisking?” Really now, DougJ. In a just world, anyone who has ever used that word in a non-ironic sense should have long since committed suicide by now.

  28. 28.

    Jamie

    August 17, 2010 at 9:03 am

    You can’t claim that our failure to institute national health care is an opportunity cost of the war when such a thing would cost far more than the money being spent on the war, and when it’s something that we probably wouldn’t be doing anyway.

    It is tricky to be wrong three different ways in one sentence, but McMegan is up to the task.

    McMegan really has problems with those order-of-magnitude errors, doesn’t she?

    Numbers are for little people. She’s got an MBA – the rigors of the program allow her to just know what’s correct.

  29. 29.

    Fargus

    August 17, 2010 at 9:48 am

    I’ve got friends with MBAs, and the program seems to amount to a couple of years of drinking and rubbing elbows with other assholes (“networking,” though I suppose a more apt descriptor would be “making contacts who will help you suck money you don’t deserve out of a system that’s rigged in your favor”). All this allows them, incredibly, some kind of “academic” cred, as though they have some kind of knowledge base compared to somebody with a Master’s degree in an actual discipline.

    How many of the wunderkinds behind the financial crisis had MBAs? That alone should tell you how useless those three letters are.

  30. 30.

    Bulworth

    August 17, 2010 at 9:58 am

    people are going to remember that the next time you talk about the costs of a program you don’t like.

    You mean, like health care reform?

    Also, too.

  31. 31.

    Steve LaBonne

    August 17, 2010 at 10:18 am

    Nobody can pack in the fail at neutron-star density like McMegan.

  32. 32.

    DPirate

    August 17, 2010 at 10:48 am

    That’s the oil that will be able to flow freely for the first time in ten years because of this war—and the revenue from which will flow to the Iraqi people for the first time in a decade.

    Holy christ, what idiocy! Because of this war, Iraqi oil will flow freely again, as it was stopped from flowing freely because of this war?

    And, the revenue, which will go to the Iraqi people, will go toward our costs of conducting the war? Uh, you sure?

  33. 33.

    DougJ

    August 17, 2010 at 10:49 am

    @P.D.Obvious,Esq.:

    That’s how the guy who wrote it described it to me.

  34. 34.

    DPirate

    August 17, 2010 at 10:50 am

    @P.D.Obvious,Esq.: That’s a word? I thought he meant fisting.

  35. 35.

    P.D.Obvious,Esq.

    August 17, 2010 at 11:34 am

    I’m using my cell right now so I can’t link/reply great, but those who wish to understand my objections should go to Antiwar.com, search for that term, and read David Henderson’s first column about it.

  36. 36.

    sherparick

    August 17, 2010 at 12:43 pm

    And the sad thing is that now the same group of neocons and glibertarians want to start a 3rd war with Iran. Of course they portray it as a “surgical strike,” a few bombing runs, and the Persians properly chastized will shrink their pretensions, overthrow their Ayatollahs, and form a obeidient, pro-American, pro-Israeli government, since everyone actually loves being bombed by us.

    But when this fantasy fades into the reality of a protracted war, with hundreds of rockets falling on Israel and our fleet retreating from the Persian gulf from fear of missiles, drones, and suicide speed boats, while our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq will face a new insurgency launched from Iran, then this elite, who will not go to fight themselves, or tax themselves to pay for war, will say that we will have to continue indefinitely to “victory,” whatever that will be. Meanwhile, we can just imagine what will happen to the economy if oil goes to a $150 a barrel or more on the risk preminium.

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