(Untitled)

[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

Comments

[freyley]

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.

[freyley]

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

[freyley]

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*