Quote:
Originally Posted by tater
As a point of information, demonstrate that the war is even "one of" the most expensive in history.
Raw dollars is not an acceptable answer. % of GDP per year would be best.
WW2 was around 15.5% of US GDP (239% of federal expenditures—deficit to pay for it, basically).
Viet Nam was 1.8% of GDP (36.7% of fed expenses)
Iraq? 1.1% of GDP (18.3% of fed expenses) (as of 2007) That had 450B, and the new total is over 700B. Even doubled it's not the most expensive, however. Not even close to WW2 in constant dollars. It's in fact not even close in actual dollars. (ww2 cost the US 288B, which is 3.6 trillion in 2010 dollars)
EDIT: if you divide 700 B$ by 7 years (2003-2010), you get 100B$ a year. (you need to make sure that you only count costs above and beyond the normal expenditure of the military) That's about 0.71% of annual GDP. Total annual US tax revenues are typically on the order of 20% of GDP.
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Funny how it'ts just a billion here, a billion there, a tenth of a percentage point of GDP when it comes to war - but try proposing even a fraction of that being spent on domestic stimulus or healthcare, and all of a sudden it's Tea Party time and tyranny and Nazi Germany and cause to march in the streets with guns slung over your shoulder.