The Cost of War

The cost of war in Iraq crossed $200,000,000,000.00 this weekend. According to National Priorities Project, that's the same as the cost of fully funding global anti-hunger efforts for 8 years.

This is just the measured economic cost of war expenses. The lives of those killed (Iraqis, Americans, British, and others), the violence that's spread in Iraq, and the damage caused by future terrorists created by this war are unmeasurable.

Freakonomics

I read this over the weekend. A well-written book that explores how much truth "Convention Wisdom" holds. Or how economics describes the actual world. The book explores many diverse topics, including parenting, racial and cultural issues, crime, and other matters. The common point is the use of data and econometric methods to analyze the data to draw conclusions. Several commonly-held beliefs are shown to be unsupported by data, while several surprising ("freaky") results emerge from the analyses.

A nice collaboration between a smart economist, and a quality writer. Worth a read, just for fun and also to know a little bit more about the world.