Re: War is good for the environment????? -- Welcome to the Phaster Graffiti Wall

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Date Posted: 12:01:48 12/10/06 Sun
Author: ben
Author Host/IP: netblock-72-25-103-119.dslextreme.com / 72.25.103.119
Subject: Re: War is good for the environment?????
In reply to: Elliot 's message, "Re: War is good for the environment?????" on 07:36:33 12/08/06 Fri

I'll be the first to admit I'm not an economist and I'm not up on the lingo like "demand curve"

But looking at the raw data of Economic Costs to the United States Stemming From the 9/11 Attacks

http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/aug02/homeland.asp

and cost of war just in iraq alone

http://zfacts.com/p/364.html

vs. the size of us economy in GDP in the USA and other industrial countries

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html#Econ

I've seen the trend that military spending over all is only a small percentage of the economy, consumer spending is the biggest slice of the economic pie (i.e. trillions in consumer spending vs billions in military spending).

So that a demand curve increase due to military spending during times of war would not make up the difference due to the decrease in consumer confidence and demand due to uncertainity.

Press reports are not hard evidence, but I think antidotal news stories suggests economic activity really goes down when there is some kind of terror (for instance there was a sniper in the the DC area a few years ago)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/Story/0,,816904,00.html

during which time I'm sure there was lots of over time paid to FBI agents, the police, press reporters, etc., but this increase was not on the same order of magnitude when consumers were scared $hitless and did not go about there daily lives of buying consumer goods.

Put another way I've thought about the operational costs to mount somethinglike a 9/11 attack, which was mounted for a million dollars at most, but cost the US directly billions of dollars cause of insurance and rebuilding costs, and the possibility might exist that US consumer economy might have lost trillions because of lost consumer confidence.

If I was doing a PHD thesis based on my observation that war is good for the enviroment

http://phaster.com/war_is_good/

I'd have to include the military demand curve which is a secondary term needed to get an accurate measurement, but since I'm not doing a PHD thesis I just looked at a the general dominated factor (i.e. the "consumer economy") in an overall industrial economy....

>I don't really disagree with your analysis. However,
>what I believe you have overlooked is that during war,
>the demand curve shifts to other resources. The
>common analogy for this is called called Guns vs
>Butter. Is it true that there is more uncertainty
>during war? Yes, but we should also consider the
>amount of resources that are then diverted to military
>assets. Once a baseline is established from this, it
>would be more effective towards your case

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