Hard for American People to Understand; Cracked Egg

[PD]

It was pure luck that Clinton was president during the birth of the internet and all of the economic pluses hat went with it (lots of extra capital gains taxes rolling in). Of course, Al did try to take credit for it…

[jztz]

Read this to appreciate the impact of the Iraqi war by numhers (go to http://www.nytimes.com directly if you want to follow some links). Bush said that he was a “decider” – one has to say that he decides w/o any gift of foresight (and he fire those who have). The country is left with what comes out of it…

January 17, 2007
Economix
What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy
By DAVID LEONHARDT
The human mind isn’t very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2 trillion. We don’t deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, and so when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it from any other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion — they all start to sound the same.

The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the number itself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When you do that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:

The war in Iraq.

In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part for saying so.

These estimates probably would have turned out to be too optimistic even if the war had gone well. Throughout history, people have typically underestimated the cost of war, as William Nordhaus, a Yale economist, has pointed out.

But the deteriorating situation in Iraq has caused the initial predictions to be off the mark by a scale that is difficult to fathom. The operation itself — the helicopters, the tanks, the fuel needed to run them, the combat pay for enlisted troops, the salaries of reservists and contractors, the rebuilding of Iraq — is costing more than $300 million a day, estimates Scott Wallsten, an economist in Washington.

That translates into a couple of billion dollars a week and, over the full course of the war, an eventual total of $700 billion in direct spending.

The two best-known analyses of the war’s costs agree on this figure, but they diverge from there. Linda Bilmes, at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and former Clinton administration adviser, put a total price tag of more than $2 trillion on the war. They include a number of indirect costs, like the economic stimulus that the war funds would have provided if they had been spent in this country.

Mr. Wallsten, who worked with Katrina Kosec, another economist, argues for a figure closer to $1 trillion in today’s dollars. My own estimate falls on the conservative side, largely because it focuses on the actual money that Americans would have been able to spend in the absence of a war. I didn’t even attempt to put a monetary value on the more than 3,000 American deaths in the war.

Besides the direct military spending, I’m including the gas tax that the war has effectively imposed on American families (to the benefit of oil-producing countries like Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia). At the start of 2003, a barrel of oil was selling for $30. Since then, the average price has been about $50. Attributing even $5 of this difference to the conflict adds another $150 billion to the war’s price tag, Ms. Bilmes and Mr. Stiglitz say.

The war has also guaranteed some big future expenses. Replacing the hardware used in Iraq and otherwise getting the United States military back into its prewar fighting shape could cost $100 billion. And if this war’s veterans receive disability payments and medical care at the same rate as veterans of the first gulf war, their health costs will add up to $250 billion. If the disability rate matches Vietnam’s, the number climbs higher. Either way, Ms. Bilmes says, “It’s like a miniature Medicare.”

In economic terms, you can think of these medical costs as the difference between how productive the soldiers would have been as, say, computer programmers or firefighters and how productive they will be as wounded veterans. In human terms, you can think of soldiers like Jason Poole, a young corporal profiled in The New York Times last year. Before the war, he had planned to be a teacher. After being hit by a roadside bomb in 2004, he spent hundreds of hours learning to walk and talk again, and he now splits his time between a community college and a hospital in Northern California.

Whatever number you use for the war’s total cost, it will tower over costs that normally seem prohibitive. Right now, including everything, the war is costing about $200 billion a year.

Treating heart disease and diabetes, by contrast, would probably cost about $50 billion a year. The remaining 9/11 Commission recommendations — held up in Congress partly because of their cost — might cost somewhat less. Universal preschool would be $35 billion. In Afghanistan, $10 billion could make a real difference. At the National Cancer Institute, annual budget is about $6 billion.

“This war has skewed our thinking about resources,” said Mr. Wallsten, a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative-leaning research group. “In the context of the war, $20 billion is nothing.”

As it happens, $20 billion is not a bad ballpark estimate for the added cost of Mr. Bush’s planned surge in troops. By itself, of course, that price tag doesn’t mean the surge is a bad idea. If it offers the best chance to stabilize Iraq, then it may well be the right option.

But the standard shouldn’t simply be whether a surge is better than the most popular alternative — a far-less-expensive political strategy that includes getting tough with the Iraqi government. The standard should be whether the surge would be better than the political strategy plus whatever else might be accomplished with the $20 billion.

This time, it would be nice to have that discussion before the troops reach Iraq.

[email protected]

[jztz]

Read this to understand why people here will NEVER agree even given the same facts… because they do not look at fact and then decide rationally the right emotional response; they have a certain mindset and emotional attachment to their mindset and they then inteprete data (or revise data) based on their pre-existing view…

December 4, 2006
DEJA VU
By CYNTHIA CROSSEN
‘Cognitive Dissonance’
December 4, 2006; Page B1

Leon Festinger, a social psychologist at Stanford University, was studying how and why rumors spread when he read about the aftermath of a severe earthquake that shook India in 1934. People who lived in a region of the country that had felt the shock but were spared death and destruction began circulating rumors that other terrible disasters were about to befall them — a cyclone, a flood, another earthquake or “unforeseeable calamities.”

Why, Mr. Festinger wondered, would rumors arise that provoked rather than allayed anxiety, especially among people who hadn’t suffered any immediate loss? And why were the rumors so widely accepted?

His conclusion derailed his analysis of rumors and put him on the track of a milestone in psychological theory: When feelings and facts are in opposition, people will find — or invent — a way to reconcile them. The people who had narrowly escaped the earthquake were scared, but their fear seemed largely unjustified. The rumors provided people with information that fit how they already felt, reducing what Mr. Festinger called their “cognitive dissonance.” His 1957 book on the subject was widely influential in many fields, and the theory is still studied and applied in advertising and market research, politics, education and health.

Why, for example, do people who know cigarettes are bad for their health continue to smoke? This is classic cognitive dissonance: They know one thing and feel another.

Mr. Festinger believed this incongruity is as uncomfortable to the human organism as hunger. One way or another, the anxiety must be assuaged. So the smoker builds a bridge — a rationalization — from feeling to fact: If he stopped smoking, he’d gain weight, which would also be unhealthy; some risks are worth taking to have a full life; the risks of smoking have been exaggerated. Indeed, in a 1954 survey asking people if they felt the link between lung cancer and cigarettes had been proven, 86% of heavy smokers thought it wasn’t proven, while only 55% of nonsmokers doubted the connection.

Cognitive dissonance also explains why many people read advertisements for products they have already bought. Almost inevitably, they have made a choice that involved compromises. The car they purchased gets great mileage, but isn’t stylish or powerful. After reading a loving description in a newspaper or magazine, they feel less conflicted about their decision — their dissonance has been reduced.

Because of cognitive dissonance, facts can be as malleable as clay. In 1951, the Princeton and Dartmouth football teams played a particularly competitive and rough game. A sample of students from each school were later shown the same film of the game and asked to note incidents of rough or illegal play. Dartmouth students saw mostly Princeton’s offenses; Princeton students saw mostly Dartmouth’s.

But where Mr. Festinger found the richest raw material for his theory was in a cult that developed in Chicago in 1954. A woman Mr. Festinger called Marion Keech claimed she was receiving messages from another planet, Clarion. The messages predicted that on a given date, a cataclysmic flood would engulf most of the continent. Those who joined Mrs. Keech’s sect would be picked up by flying saucers and evacuated from the planet.

A brief newspaper story about the cult came to the attention of Mr. Festinger. He was reminded of the followers of a New England farmer, William Miller, who predicted that the Second Advent of Christ would occur in 1843. Thousands of people who believed Miller’s prophecy prepared for the world to end. But 1843 passed without incident. Far from admitting that the prediction was wrong, the Millerites attempted to lessen their cognitive dissonance in two ways: They changed the date of the Second Advent to the following year and stepped up their campaign, trying to convince even more people that their belief was right.

Mr. Festinger and two colleagues infiltrated Mrs. Keech’s movement, acting as participants for three months. They watched as about two dozen well-educated, upper-middle-class people, “who led normal lives and filled responsible roles in society,” quit their jobs and threw away their possessions. Before the dates of the expected flood, the cult was mostly averse to publicity and had no interest in attracting other believers.

On the day before the flood, the group was told that at midnight a man would appear at Mrs. Keech’s house and take them to a flying saucer. But no knock came at her door, and the group struggled to find an explanation for why there would be no flying saucer or flood. At 4:45 a.m., the group said, a message arrived from God saying He had stayed the flood because of their strength.

What interested Mr. Festinger was not so much this face-saving explanation as what the cult members did in the following weeks. Rather than shunning public attention as they had before, they began zealously proselytizing. “There were almost no lengths to which these people would not go now to get publicity and to attract potential believers,” Mr. Festinger wrote. “If more converts could be found, then the dissonance between their belief and the knowledge that the prediction hadn’t been correct could be reduced.”

Write to Cynthia Crossen at [email protected]

[sdnativeson]

Is this economically or politically motivated? Political IMO. So for less than half of 1.2 trillion dollars we can fund a national public health “campaign” (I hope that means program) for a decade? Yes, yes, I know, and cancer research, diabetes, heart disease and worldwide immunization of children. Sounds a little too good to be true.

I read this and wind up with a lot of questions and doubts as to the veracity of many of these statements. I also initially find some inaccuracies, for me there is too much that at an first reading, I find to be generalized and vague.

[PerryChase]

Considering the cost of the war, we could have given each Iraqi $5000 to depose Saddam themselves. Bush could’ve gone on TV and promised $5000 to each Iraqi if they’d capture Saddam and kill him.

America would then be seen as a generous benefactor.

$1 trillion equals $28,571 for every single man, woman and child in Iraq (assuming a 35 million population).

[jztz]

SDNative, just read carefully, and do some math:

half of 1.2 trillion is 600 billion. To run the “public campaign” it talked about for 10 years, that means $60 billion a year. And it includes:

– double cancer research – it only costs about $5 billion.
The NIH spending on cancer research has been $4.83 and $4.79 in 2005 and 2006, and will go down slightly to $4.75 in 2007.
(either researchers get no raises, or they fire some of them!)
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/NCI/research-funding

– “a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives”. Let’s assume 10M children, and it costs $200 each (money goes a long way in developing countries when it’s not used in war!), then that’s $2 billion. Let’s make it 2.5x to reach $5 billion.

– That leave $50 billion for “treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged”. Notice the key word “unmanaged” — likely those people who are not insured who are unfortunate to have diseases. I don’t have stats, but assume that on average treatment is $10K each to manage these conditions, you are talking about 5M people (US has about 45 million uninsured, so this works out to be that about 10% has heart and/or diabetes).

So if you keep doing it for 10 years; cancer research may yield cure to save millions of people’s lives; 10M children a year – that adds to be 100M children over a decade; and those 5M uninsured will for sure live better/longer and use emergency room less as their only healthcare… of course my numbers can be off, but whatever the real numbers work out to be, it’s still “an unprecedented public health campaign”.

So only if that 1.2 trillion is not spent someplace else! For the $1.2 trillion that’s spent (and will be spent), so far we had 3000+ US soldiers dead; tens of thousands maimed; and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead or wounded.

There seems to be an unwillingness to accept the article’s basic thesis – that $1.2 trillion can do an awful lot of good things to this country — so I suggest that you read the WSJ article about cognitive disonance – and read it carefully too!

[TheBreeze]

What really sucks about the costs of Bush’s War is not only all the good that money could have done right here in America, but also that Bush spent all this money and put our country in a worse situation than it otherwise would have been. So it’s not just that Bush took $1.2 trillion and essentially flushed it down the toilet. He also took some portion of that money and handed it directly to the terrorists.

For example, Iran (controlled by Shiites) is absolutely giddy that the U.S. took out the Sunni government in Iraq and replaced it with a Shiite-controlled government. Iran had very little influence in Iraq when Saddam and other Sunnis were in control, but now Iran will have major influence in Iraq going forward. Basically Bush’s idiotic policies have greatly expanded Iranian influence in the Middle East.

[TheBreeze]

It makes me happy that the person, Saddam Hussein and his entourage are no longer in power anywhere, since he is of the same genre as Hitler -though not as powerful. I don’t understand why anyone would say the world would be the same or better off had we left him where he was…in power as a brutal dictator. The idea of his brand of terror against individuals with his unbridled brutality—-going unchecked—sickens me. The spread of it would be tragic.

SHILOH,

Have you heard about the people being found dead in Iraq NOW with holes drilled in their knees? Who do you think is doing that? Do you think Saddam has come back from the dead to perpetuate these crimes?

The U.S. hasn’t done anything by removing Saddam. It’s projected that 34,000 people will be murdered in Iraq this year. Over 100,000 have been killed since the war began. Do you think Iraq is some kind of fairyland where everyone gets along now that the evil Saddam is gone? Wrong. All that Bush has done is replace a brutal dictator with a Shiite puppet government that implicitly sponsors Shiite death squads. Subtle “ethnic cleansing” (I hate that word) is going on every day in Iraq now. Shiite militias and death squads have been incorporating themselves into the Iraqi army and police since at least 2005.

The only difference between Iraq now and Iraq under Saddam is that Bush is sponsoring the brutality that takes place in Iraq now.

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/109706.html

[sdnativeson]

we won’t be better off if we don’t finish what we started TB, but I don’t think you can or will entertain that train of thought. I disagree that the US hasn’t done anything by removing Saddam.

I concede that there have/has been short-sightedness involved, combined with the unrealistic (however well intentioned goal) of attempting to create some sort of democratic self-government in a place where there never has been one and IMO the culture isn’t ready for.

I see both success and failure at all levels.

The sunnis and shiites were killing each other before we arrived yes, even under Saddam TB. It just worked in his best interest to allow it most of the time. If one wanted to make a concession to Saddam he, his family and the Baath party were equal opportunity murderers.

[sdnativeson]

jztz yes, I have read it but, so what? I can toss that comment right back at you. Yes, I have my misgivings about those numbers and when I get the time, I’ll investigate further. Now I never said the 1.2 trillion wouldn’t do a lot for the country did I? I don’t think it was even implied in my statement. I am fully capable of doing basic math, even with only twenty digits. Realize, that the way mathmatics (for the most part) works is that the formulas execute their function correctly regardless of the accuracy of the numbers.

I still find it to be vague and overall generalized. Seriously, implying that Iraq is the one and only reason for the oil price increase? I find that a glaring falsehood don’t you?

[sdcellar]

jztz– Nice post with the cognitive dissonance piece. I assume you’ve considered that the NY Times might provide lefties with what they need and Fox News the same for righties?

The interesting thing about the NYT article you posted is that it has bits that both Princeton and Dartmouth alumni can latch on to, and the left and right for that matter. I assume you didn’t consider it a shining beacon of “truth”.

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