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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Friday, September 12, 2003 :::
I didn't tell you to visit the September 11th edition of Lileks's Bleat yesterday. This was mostly because I figured I shouldn't have to. One never wants to read, "I am resigned, in advance, to the loss of an American city by a nuclear weapon." But it's probably realistic.
I've been thinking about this $87 billion budgeted over the next year in the war on terrorists. I've been thinking of it as $300 per American -- one of my better habits is to divide any federal budget number by 300 million, or a little bit less. It's not out of line with what I would have expected; in fact, the only real surprise I've had with respect to the Iraqi campaign was the speed with which the city of Baghdad fell. [Correction -- I naively thought we'd find more evidence of WMDs than we have.]
$300 per American is a good indication of general size, but it's not the way to look at it if we're figuring out whether it's worth it. The questions there are more along the lines of how much we're reducing the risk of what, and how much the "what" would cost us in, as they say, blood and treasure. None of these figures can be estimated within an order of magnitude, but they're the sorts of things we should consider. And $87 billion can be justified by a pretty small reduction in the risk of losing downtown Buffalo in the middle of a work-day.
::: posted by Steven at 12:47 PM
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