Will we still be paying for Iraq in 2100?
MICHAEL NAGLE/Getty Images Lee Sigelman, a political scientist at George Washington University, blogs about an article by James L. Clayton, “Vietnam: The 200 Year Mortgage,” (subscribers only) that appeared in The Nation way back in 1969. In it, Clayton argued that the ultimate cost of Vietnam could be far larger than that of the war ...
MICHAEL NAGLE/Getty Images
Lee Sigelman, a political scientist at George Washington University, blogs about an article by James L. Clayton, “Vietnam: The 200 Year Mortgage,” (subscribers only) that appeared in The Nation way back in 1969. In it, Clayton argued that the ultimate cost of Vietnam could be far larger than that of the war itself, since “the bulk of the money is spent long after the fighting stops.” By way of historical analogy, Clayton painted the following scenario (as quoted by Sigelman):
Suppose a drummer boy, age 14, became a soldier in 1861 and was disabled in that war. Suppose also that he married, had children, his wife died, and he remarried late in late, at say age 60 in 1907. Suppose further that his second wife was 25 years old at marriage and that at age 30 she bore him a child who was mentally or physically incapable of supporting himself. That child would be 57 years old today [that is, in 1969] and still drawing benefits — more than a century after the war ended.
Sounds unlikely, right? Yet Clayton nonetheless found that 1,353 dependents of Civil War veterans were still getting government benefits as late as 1967.
Sigelman goes on:
Continuing his analysis, Clayton indicated that up to 1967, veterans benefits for the Spanish-American War had amounted to twelve times the original cost of that war, and didn’t peak until 51 years after the war ended; that World War II veterans benefits would probably peak around 2000, and that dependents of Vietnam War veterans would be drawing benefits until the 22nd century.
While I don’t think there are any 14-year-olds fighting in Iraq, the basic concept here is not a revelation. In their paper (pdf) estimating the economic costs of Iraq, Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes found that the “true costs” of the war could exceed $2 trillion. In what they call their “moderate scenario,” the scholars assume that “troops continue to be deployed through 2015 and these costs continue throughout the lifetime of the veterans (40 years).”
But they only counted payments to veterans themselves for healthcare and other benefits. It would be devilishly tough to estimate, but I wonder what that total figure would look like were Stiglitz and Bilmes to count the dependents as well? Maybe it’s better not to know.
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