The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Linda J. Bilmes
BUY IT NEW
- $22.95 Online price$18.36 Member price(Save 20%)Limited Time Offer! Everyone receives the Member Price on books.
See Details
(Hardcover)
- Pub. Date: March 2008
- 311pp
- Sales Rank: 115,748
| More Formats | |
|---|---|
| Paperback | $15.15 |
Buy it Used: 28 copies from $1.99 See All Available
Customers who bought this also bought
Product Details
- Pub. Date: March 2008
- Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
- Format: Hardcover, 311pp
- Sales Rank: 115,748
- ISBN-13: 9780393067019
- ISBN: 0393067017
Synopsis
"This is a catalog [of costs] the Bush team never looked at. It's a catalog that they still don't want you to see."-James Galbraith
The Washington Post - Carlos Lozada
Stiglitz and Bilmes methodically build a compelling case that the costs of the war far exceed the $500 billion or so officially spent on it thus far. Yet by making many assumptions about the future course of the conflict—from its duration (through at least 2017, they predict) to its impact on global oil prices ($5 to $10 extra per barrel, for seven to eight years)—the authors will leave many readers unconvinced. Will the war prove extraordinarily expensive? Absolutely. But will the price tag be $2 trillion? $3 trillion? $5 trillion? It's impossible to know…Stiglitz and Bilmes should be commended—not disparaged—for their painstaking work. But war critics should weigh the numbers carefully…The book's title suggests a level of precision that is not borne out in its pages. The book's stronger lesson is the sheer range of costs—and foregone opportunities—that the authors ably identify.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Linda J. Bilmes, of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, is an expert in government finance. She is a former assistant secretary and chief financial officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics, Joseph E. Stiglitz is the author of Making Globalization Work; Globalization and Its Discontents; and, with Linda Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War. He was chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and served as senior vice president and chief economist at the World Bank. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.
Customer Reviews
Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflictby Anonymous
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
April 24, 2008: Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, and Linda Bilmes, a lecturer at Harvard, have produced an estimate of the real cost of the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, 4,000 US troops have been killed, 58,000 wounded, and 100,000 have returned home with serious mental disorders. Stiglitz and Bilmes estimate that the USA?s total lifetime medical, disability and social security costs for the two wars will be $717 billion through to 2017. They estimate that the war against Iraq will cost the USA a total of $2.65 trillion through to 2017. The war on Afghanistan will cost another $850 billion through to 2017. The total is $3.5 trillion. 'Bush misunderestimated it would be $50 billion, wrong by a factor of seventy.' This works out at $25,000 for every US household. The costs of the two wars to the rest of the world are another $3 trillion, largely because the invasion has driven up oil prices from $25 a barrel to $120. This has cost the world $800 billion so far, and will have cost an estimated $1.6 trillion by 2015. It has cost us in Britain ?24 billion so far, and will have cost an estimated ?50 billion by 2015. The wars? direct military costs to us in Britain so far are ?8.7 billion the estimated future costs till 2015 are another ?7 billion. Veterans? disability and medical costs are ?2.3 billion. The social costs of deaths and disabilities are another ?2 billion. The total is ?20 billion, ?800 per household. The First World War cost the USA $577 billion, the war on Korea $295 billion, the war on Vietnam $670 billion and the Gulf War $94 billion. The total cost of these four wars was $1.64 trillion, which is just half the cost of the two current wars.
Loading...