Costs of Vietnam, Iraq, inflation adjusted.

[SirNitram]

Iraq War to date: 648 Billion dollars, adjusted to 2008 dollars.
Vietnam War: 686 Billion dollars, adjusted to 2008 dollars.

Since it's not inflation, this shows a pretty drunken-sailor attitude towards money if we've already almost hit the levels of a war lasting much longer.

This and other inflation-adjusted comparisons in this PDF. CRS Major US War Costs

Unrelated fact: WW2 cost 4.1 Trillion in 2008 dollars.

[Count Dooku]

Iraq War to date: 648 Billion dollars, adjusted to 2008 dollars.
Vietnam War: 686 Billion dollars, adjusted to 2008 dollars.

Since it's not inflation, this shows a pretty drunken-sailor attitude towards money if we've already almost hit the levels of a war lasting much longer.

This and other inflation-adjusted comparisons in this PDF. CRS Major US War Costs

Unrelated fact: WW2 cost 4.1 Trillion in 2008 dollars.

WW2 sure was expensive!!! But any nation-wide mobilization, I suppose. About a year ago, I read a really interesting article about what could have been done with all the money spent on the Iraq War. . .I know Republitards don't [seem to] care much about the thousands of allied troops, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's that have been killed, but ironically enough they care little about the cost of the war. . .Aren't they for fiscal responsibility? Isn't it also their policy to trade with potentially hostile nations to pacify them? I mean, I wouldn't go to war with a nation whom I did a great deal of business with . . .

[Sea Skimmer]

Iraq War to date: 648 Billion dollars, adjusted to 2008 dollars.
Vietnam War: 686 Billion dollars, adjusted to 2008 dollars.

Since it's not inflation, this shows a pretty drunken-sailor attitude towards money if we've already almost hit the levels of a war lasting much longer.

Well really high intensity US involvement in Vietnam only lasted 1966-1971, which is as long as Iraq has lasted; the ground forces present in 1965 and 1972 weren’t particularly numerous, and virtually nonexistent by the formal end of involvement in 1973.

Meanwhile the US GDP in year 2000 dollars for 1965 was about 3.2 trillion, while for 2003 it was about 10.5 trillion and has since gone up a fair bit. At the peak of the Vietnam War military spending reached 9.4% of the GDP, for Iraq even if all 648 billion had been spent in one fiscal year total military spending would still only work out to be about 10%... which would mean all the other years of fighting in Iraq would cost nothing. But since that’s not the case and the money is spent year by year (well really, more like six to nine months is funded at a time) the combined normal DoD budget + Iraq supplemental work out to be more like 4.75-5.00% (not exactly sure but its around that) of the GDP.

Mind you, many years PEACETIME the US has spent over 5% of the GDP on defence, and in fact during some of the late 1950s we actually spent a higher percent of the GDP on the military then even during the peak of Nam spending! Over 10%, which is a bit insane in all reality, its no joke that the US in the 1950s acted like it WAS at war with communism and funded the military on a mobilization basis. What’s more, defence spending as a percentage of total discretionary spending has steadily dropped since the 1960s. In fact we spent a higher percentage of discretionary funds on the military in 1962 then in 1969, the peak of US involvement in Vietnam.

Iraq is far more expensive per man deployed in combat… but that’s directly related to the fact that we have a very well equipped all volunteer all mechanized force in Iraq, vs. mostly lightly equipped footslogging conscripts walking around Vietnam. Five years into the Vietnam war and the US had lost something like 45,000 killed, vs. 4124 in Iraq so far. Iraq isn’t as intense a war, but a force equipped to Vietnam standards would have suffered much more heavily anyway.

I know Republitards don't [seem to] care much about the thousands of allied troops, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's that have been killed, but ironically enough they care little about the cost of the war. . .Aren't they for fiscal responsibility? Isn't it also their policy to trade with potentially hostile nations to pacify them? I mean, I wouldn't go to war with a nation whom I did a great deal of business with . . .

See above, the war is less expensive in GDP terms then peacetime in 1957 was, so I’d say as far as wars go they’ve been quite fiscally conservative. As for ‘thousands’ of allied dead, try 314, of which about half are from the UK, with the next heaviest losses (33) falling on Italy, almost all of them from a pair of car bombings in 2004. Italy withdrew soon after and now is using the same MP battalion to patrol its own city streets because of rampant crime!

[Ender]

You are only using the direct cost of the war. Indirect costs, nationally and world wide, are much much higher

3 trillion in America, 3 trillion in the rest of the world.

Fun and games time - you are given 6 trillion dollars. What do you do with it?

A WAP1000 PWR runs about 2 billion a pop and cranks out 1.12 GW. I could buy 3000 of them, crank out around 3 TW and provide 1/5th of the worlds total power.

Costs about $1000 to convert your average suburban home to solar power. Based off the numbers I'm seeing from google, I could convert every home in North America and Europe with a good chunk of change left over.

I could do another 60 Mars Rover missions, or 109 Mars Direct missions (at that point I haven't done missions, I've built a fucking colony. I rule!)

AIDs drugs cost about $20k a year from what i see (seems low), so assuming 60 years from the point of infection I could treat 5 million infected people for the rest of their days. That's ~1/6th of the entire infected populace.

What could you do with it?

[Sea Skimmer]

You are only using the direct cost of the war. Indirect costs, nationally and world wide, are much much higher

3 trillion in America, 3 trillion in the rest of the world.

I’m sure the indirect costs are much higher, but call me very skeptical on 6 trillion dollars, especially being calculated in 2005. I’ve seen more then one estimate of ‘indirect costs’ thrown around over the years and they’ve varied wildly, 1-2 trillion is common. Anyway, Vietnam had some pretty massive indirect costs too, a lot of people in Indochina are still paying them too, but the US survived it and came out a stronger nation.

Fun and games time - you are given 6 trillion dollars. What do you do with it?

I can think of lots of things, but in reality none of it would happen because the money would just be left in the hands of consumers, who thanks to lower global oil prices would for the most part just waste it all on more SUVs and other pointless luxuries

[Ender]

I’m sure the indirect costs are much higher, but call me very skeptical on 6 trillion dollars, especially being calculated in 2005. I’ve seen more then one estimate of ‘indirect costs’ thrown around over the years and they’ve varied wildly, 1-2 trillion is common.

And if you had read all of it, you would have seen that the ones in this article are the ones who came up with the initial 1-2 triln estimate, deliberately lowballed it at the time.

Anyway, Vietnam had some pretty massive indirect costs too, a lot of people in Indochina are still paying them too, but the US survived it and came out a stronger nation.

I see that the difference between "in spite of" and "because of" flies by you.

[bobalot]

When given the chance between needlessly blowing stuff up or investing in the future, the nations on the decline will choose the former.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Fun and games time - you are given 6 trillion dollars. What do you do with it?

I can think of lots of things, but in reality none of it would happen because the money would just be left in the hands of consumers, who thanks to lower global oil prices would for the most part just waste it all on more SUVs and other pointless luxuries

Which is somehow worse than wasting it killing people, and spreading misery and hatred.

Even if you're right about what would happen to the money, that's a sick position to take.

[Death from the Sea]

Costs about $1000 to convert your average suburban home to solar power. Based off the numbers I'm seeing from google, I could convert every home in North America and Europe with a good chunk of change left over.

what? I am finding people spending anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 to use solar power for their homes. I do admit that I only found a few people doing this, where did you find yours with the $1000 price tag?

[Ender]

Costs about $1000 to convert your average suburban home to solar power. Based off the numbers I'm seeing from google, I could convert every home in North America and Europe with a good chunk of change left over.

what? I am finding people spending anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 to use solar power for their homes. I do admit that I only found a few people doing this, where did you find yours with the $1000 price tag?

Turns out those were for cabins. Tack a zero on for regular house. Whoops.

[Szass Tam]

Costs about $1000 to convert your average suburban home to solar power. Based off the numbers I'm seeing from google, I could convert every home in North America and Europe with a good chunk of change left over.

what? I am finding people spending anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 to use solar power for their homes. I do admit that I only found a few people doing this, where did you find yours with the $1000 price tag?

Turns out those were for cabins. Tack a zero on for regular house. Whoops.

Even still, the costs would come down significantly when the solar panels go into mass-production, and you could thus do a large portion of the homes, then transfer the rest onto power from existing solar/wind/hydroelectric/ nuclear plants.

IIRC, we could have flown the entire population of Iraq to the U.S. and given them $1,000 for the same cost as the initial invasion.

[Glocksman]

Question: what was the US budget deficit and total national debt in inflation adjusted dollars WRT the Iraq and Vietnam wars?

[Master of Ossus]

Even still, the costs would come down significantly when the solar panels go into mass-production, and you could thus do a large portion of the homes, then transfer the rest onto power from existing solar/wind/hydroelectric/ nuclear plants.

Aren't solar panels already being mass-produced, though, by numerous companies? If anything, their costs would go up if we made a major government push for it (more major even than California's idiotic solar initiative) because then we'd have to switch resources to production from previously more productive ends.