Since it looks as though “Andrew Gelman”:http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/11/a_political_sci.html has already announced it, I figure that I’m now allowed to publicize a new political science blog, “The Monkey Cage”:http://www.themonkeycage.org/. It’s written by three of my colleagues at GWU, David Park, John Sides, and Lee Sigelman (who’s received previous mention at CT for his groundbreaking collaborative research on “Supreme Court Justice betting pools”:https://crookedtimber.org/2004/10/29/dirty-pool/). One “interesting post”:http://www.themonkeycage.org/2007/11/the_longterm_economic_cost_of_1.html#more on the costs of wars:
Recent days have brought a shower of media attention to the long-term economic cost of the war in Iraq. … According to Clayton, the pattern of long-term costs associated with American wars indicates that “the bulk of the money is spent long after the fighting stops” — and when Clayton said “long after,” he meant it. The primary reason: veterans benefits, which for the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean War averaged 1.8 times the original cost of the wars themselves.
It would be interesting to know whether this is likely to hold for the Iraq war. Will veterans’ benefits be as costly for an all-volunteer army? Has the ratio of technology costs to manpower costs changed substantially since the earlier wars discussed? I know next to nothing about the minutiae of military budgets – any CT readers have leads??
{ 11 comments }
SG 11.26.07 at 6:33 am
I would say that since:
1. health care costs tend to rise faster than inflation
2. this war has a higher rate of casualties to deaths than previous wars
3. the casualties are often more serious and involve novel head injuries
the ratio of veterans benefits costs to war costs ought to be higher after this war. Except that Bush has tried very hard to push down the cost of veterans services.
(And except also that my understanding of 2 and 3 is based on a few things I have read in the newspaper – but that never stopped me giving a wrong opinion before).
joel turnipseed 11.26.07 at 7:18 am
I’m not sure the question is properly put…
A few quick thoughts:
1) It’s unlikely that even if we fought in Iraq for 20 years that we would approach spending on WWII, either in terms of direct or indirect and subsequent costs; in terms of either dollars spent or lives lost or men wounded.
2) Both our government and our economy are MUCH larger than they’ve ever been. So, if you take something like the GAR after the Civil War or the American Legion after World War One, it’s highly unlikely that veterans will ever again form as effective a political coalition or consume as high a percentage of the national tax base. One reason the 1932 Bonus March was so controversial is that the veterans were demanding $2B in payment–at that time an amount equal to the entire federal budget & at a time when veteran’s benefits consumed something like 40% of the existing federal budget.
3) Even Vietnam positively dwarfed the Iraq War in terms of size and cost. Nearly 8M men & women served in the Vietnam war. I think it’s doubtful that 1M have served thus far in Iraq and Afghanistan (though it may be right around that number)–and again, our country and our economy are much, much bigger than they were 40-odd years ago.
4) Soldiers are paid better and better trained than at any time in our nation’s history. They are backed up by the most sophisticated and expensive weapons and support systems in the history of the human race. They also receive fewer constant-dollar post-service benefits compared to WWII and Vietnam.
So, even if there is some high number (and there’s reason to believe it’s very high) of wounded soldiers and Marines needing post-war benefits relative to those who served, it’s highly unlikely that these numbers and associated costs would be greater than in other wars. And even if they were… as a percentage of our economy and society, they wouldn’t and couldn’t come close to the impact our previous wars have had–because this is, relatively-speaking, a very small war by comparison.
Finally, all these figures are off the top of my head at 1:30 AM. Feel free to revise/refine… but the gist, I think, will remain just about right.
Tom T. 11.26.07 at 12:56 pm
One other question to ask is to what extent the 1.8 ratio of future benefits over operating costs for wartime veterans differs from the applicable ratio for non-wartime veterans. I.e., veterans of a standing peacetime armed force incur future benefits as well. Presumably not as much, but some portion of that 1.8 is going to be paid regardless of whether there is a war or not.
Henry 11.26.07 at 3:08 pm
Joel – I think you are misunderstanding the question I was asking, which wasn’t “Is the Iraq war likely to be as costly in absolute terms over the long run as previous wars,” but instead, “Is the Iraq war likely to display the same pattern of having a considerably more costly aftermath than fighting phase.” I probably could have phrased it better.
Hogan 11.26.07 at 3:38 pm
some portion of that 1.8 is going to be paid regardless of whether there is a war or not.
Especially since we decided to go to war with the army we had, rather than raise an army appropriate to the task, as we did in the Civil War and WWI/II. It’s not clear that we’ve produced any new veterans this time around.
c.l. ball 11.26.07 at 5:15 pm
Someone has to tell the monkey cage crew that they need to turn their Typekey comments section on.
Henry 11.26.07 at 6:50 pm
comments are now working over there …
M. Gordon 11.27.07 at 4:35 pm
One difference between this war and the previous war is the extensive use of “contractors” (mercenaries). Assuming they even get post-war care, it is from their employer, and so the costs are charged to the client (the US) up front. This, in addition to how much more costly contractors are than troops, probably will tend to front-load the costs of the Iraq war more than other wars, though I’m not sure of the magnitude of that shift.
Ragout 11.28.07 at 3:41 am
Well, first of all, there’s an important distinction between the costs of the war and the “long term costs.” The first are real costs: fighter planes get built instead of passenger planes, tanks instead of cars, soldiers get killed instead of dying of old age. The long-term costs are mostly just transfers, not economic costs: some people pay taxes to fund others’ pensions.
Second, at least for the Civil War and WW1, the long term costs were pensions. As someone has already pointed out, pensions for Civil War and WW1 veterans made up about as large a percentage of the government budget as Social Security does today. Today, though, we already have Social Security and soldiers are already entitled to pensions whether they fight or not. So, if you do the accounting right, retirement benefits aren’t an additional cost of the war.
Fred 11.28.07 at 5:28 pm
Cost of war:
Children not born because the future father died:
Value: Zero
faux facsimile 11.29.07 at 1:20 am
Edward Abbey’s ghost is banging on your server and he wants his gang back. Unless you’re planning some criminal anarchy on that new blog of yours. In which case it’d be okay.
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