(no subject)

[pmb]

Y'know, we could have just given every Iraqi citizen $37 336.58 and we'd still be ahead by 3,000 american lives and 500,000 iraqi lives. A trillion is a very large number. I bet that, for a flat rate of 37k per capita, we could have gotten the entire Iraqi army to overthrow Saddam all on their own.

Or, as an alternate view, you and I and everyone we know in this country has paid or will pay 4,000 dollars each for this useless war.

Comments

[freyley.livejournal.com]

That would have been capital flight. The $37k/iraqi was largely spent on American weapons and equipment, which mostly went to American companies, or on Iraqi infrastructure, which also largely went to American companies.

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

This is the same error as the bogus worries over the "trade deficit". Unless Iraq switches to a dollar economy, what are they going to do with dollars? They are going to spend them on buying stuff from American suppliers or investing in American companies, or giving them to people who will do those things. Dollars are not capital, they are pieces of paper, and pieces of paper which are only useful in the US. Any pieces of paper we send overseas will get happily sent back, since people would rather use them here to buy goods/investments than have a useless pile of paper at home.

[freyley.livejournal.com]

that's not really that true, as there isn't that much infrastructure in Iraq to allow for that much in the way of purchases, and with all the sanctions and Saddam, there probably wouldn't have been much infrastructure built to do so, so the end result would have just been inflationary, at least in the immediate term, and then deflationary when the infrastructure was built. (there are cases, by the way, of stockpiling of dollars and using them primarily locally as an internal currency, resulting, effectively, in currency flight, albeit minor, though not capital flight).

Which points to the suggestion that giving each iraqi 37k, beyond being logistically about as difficult as the war (though far less bloody for us -- could be as bloody for them, perhaps) wouldn't really have much effect.

(I made no effort to mark it, but my first comment was not particularly serious.)

And there actually is concern about the trade deficit, and it's not bogus. It has to do with macroeconomic factors and currency valuation factors and I'm not sure that we really undrestand it, but a long term trade deficit, for anybody but the US, seems to be linked to problems. The US has managed to avoid that, which might be the theories being wrong, or it might just be Goliath.

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

stockpiling dollars - that would be currency flight. But the result would just be a smidgeon of domestic dollar deflation, which is not a bad thing.

It would be logistically difficult to give each Iraqi $37K. But I find it tough to believe it's as difficult as a war. Couldn't we just use the Army as a giant FedEx, and let them use their $37K to order cool shit from American catalogues? Surely that's logistically solvable.

I don't really feel like getting into the trade deficit, but the economists I read in my little echo chamber think it's a bogus concern.

[freyley.livejournal.com]

I think if we gave each Iraqi 37K we'd have to figure out which ones had already gotten it...and keep them from killing each other just after they'd gotten the money...and lots of other logistical difficulties.

Plus, there'd be at least a hundred hour debate in the Senate about what currency to give it to them in...and all sorts of other stuff. =)

As for the trade deficit, this is why I hemmed and hawed about macroeconomic theory, because I'm really not sure that anyone understands macroeconomic theory, or that the correlations they've made hold up beyond the limited examples they found them in. *shrug*