Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. Most Positive View of Income Taxes Since 1956A recent Gallop poll shows Americans have a more positive view of income taxes than they have had in recent years (and the general view is more positive than you might have thought).In response to the question, "Do you consider the amount of federal income tax you have to pay as too high, about right, or too low?", a majority (51%) thought it was either too low or about right (with 48% saying that it was about right):  Meanwhile, in response to the question, "Do you regard the income tax you will have to pay this year as fair?", a solid majority continued to say that it was fair:  I am not quite sure what to make of the fact that the percentage of people saying that their taxes are "fair" is ten to twelve points higher than the percentage of people saying that the amount they pay is "about right." Gallop claims that people are more likely to think that their taxes are "fair" during wartime. Go figure. --CS Labels: Chris Sturr, Gallop, income inequality, income tax, taxes, war Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). The Economics of WarWe get deluged with press releases, most of which we ignore (since the senders usually assume that we are a mainstream business or personal finance magazine). Recently we received some press releases from the site Antiwar.com, which humbly describes itself as "the oldest and most important antiwar Website." (It turns out that there is also an Antiwar.org, but it redirects to Antiwar.com.) The press releases were about the 6th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War (March 19th). I thought about re-posting an op-ed by their executive director, Alexia Gilmore, in the San Jose Mercury News, but I thought it might be better to find out whether they had some economic analysis of the war that we could share with our blog readers. What their communications guy sent me was this article by a David R. Henderson of the Hoover Institution. The gist of the article is that what Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek showed about how command economies are doomed to failure can also be applied to centrally planned foreign policy; the article makes the analogy between "acentrally planning an economy and centrally deciding to intervene in another country's affairs."Now, Antiwar.com makes a big deal about being a "big tent" organization; one press release says, "The site includes content from well-known authors around the world and across the political spectrum, from Daniel Ellsberg to Pat Buchanan," while Antiwar Radio features "interesting and noted guests such as Rep. Ron Paul, Noam Chomsky, and many more." And that's fine. I don't even mind reading about von Mises and Hayek on occasion. But the several articles by this Hoover Institution guy on Antiwar.com have impressive graphics granting him the title of "THE WARTIME ECONOMIST," and one gets the impression that he is almost the official economist of Antiwar.com. And there is not much sign of any left economic critiques of militarism on the site.  Anyhow, this inspired me to finally do what I've been intending to do for a while, which is to put together a special web page with the articles we've run in Dollars & Sense on war and militarism in recent years. I even made a nifty "guns and butter" graphic to go with it. We have a couple of new articles on militarism in the works—stay tuned. Labels: costs of war, iraq war, militarism, military spending, war Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). The Three Trillion Dollar WarJoseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have updated their estimate of the costs to the United States (direct and indirect) of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in an article in yesterday's Times of London. We reported on an early version of their original findings in our Economy in Numbers column in the July/August 2006 issue of D&S.Stiglitz and Bilmes's research on this topic have estimated the costs of the wars in three categories: (1) direct costs to the U.S. government (including Department of Defense spending, spending by the Veterans Administration, demobilization costs, and interest on debt incurred because of the wars); (2) economic costs that are not borne by the government (e.g. the lost economic contributions of reservists while they are deployed, or after they are dead or injured); and (3) larger macroeconomic costs to the U.S. economy as a whole (e.g. those resulting from increases in the price of oil, plausibly due to instability in the Middle East resulting from the war). According to the initial conclusions of their research (released in February of 2006; they didn't publish the study until later that year), the first two categories of costs (direct and indirect--not including the larger macroeconomic costs), could be conservatively estimated at between $937 billion and $1.5 trillion. They estimated the macroeconomic costs to the United States as "are potentially very large; possibly even a multiple of the direct costs," that is, possibly several trillion dollars beyond the costs to the government. The article in yesterday's London Times estimates the total costs more definitively at $3 trillion: From the unhealthy brew of emergency funding, multiple sets of books, and chronic underestimates of the resources required to prosecute the war, we have attempted to identify how much we have been spending - and how much we will, in the end, likely have to spend. The figure we arrive at is more than $3 trillion. Our calculations are based on conservative assumptions. They are conceptually simple, even if occasionally technically complicated. A $3 trillion figure for the total cost strikes us as judicious, and probably errs on the low side. Needless to say, this number represents the cost only to the United States. It does not reflect the enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq. The article goes on to estimate the costs to the UK: [T]he budgetary cost to the UK of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2010 will total more than £18 billion. If we include the social costs, the total impact on the UK will exceed £20 billion. (The added social costs to the UK are proportionately lower than those in the United States because the UK is a net exporter of oil.) Stiglitz and Bilmes estimate that the current Iraq war will cost ten times the first Gulf war, and one-third more than the Vietnam War. The Bush administration's cost estimates in advance of the war were of course drastically lower than the actual costs. Donald Rumsfeld estimated the costs at $50 to $60 billion, and was outraged when Bush's economic advisor Larry Lindsey said it would cost $200 billion. According to Stiglitz and Bilmes, Lindey downplayed his higher estimate by saying that "The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy." And shouldn't defense spending stimulate the economy? Shouldn't we expect, on Keynesian grounds, that all the money the government is lavishing on the war would stimulate the economy? Yet we are sinking into recession. In the upcoming (March/April) issue of D&S, Arthur MacEwan will answer this question in our "Ask Dr. Dollar" column. Labels: Afghanistan, Iraq, Joseph Stiglitz, Linda Bilmes, war Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Dollars & Sense talks about mediaTonight, Wed. Jan 31, 2007, 7pm at encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave, 5th Floor, Boston, MA 02111David Barsamian and Cynthia Peters: Who's Got Your Back? Alternative and Mainstream Media and the War without End Panel of questioners: Linda Pinkow of WMBR, John Grebe of WZBC, and Esther Cervantes of Dollars & Sense With this event, Mass Global Action & IndyMedia look at the antiwar movement and the media. Specifically, it considers the two media options open to the progressive movement: Extensive coverage in the alternative media, and marginal attention from the mainstream media Going beyond this dichotomy, however, we ask how activists can use both forms media to get bolster the antiwar movement and generate a pro-peace agenda. Our roundtable is composed of longtime organizers who are also media professionals so that we may consider how these media forms interact. The program is formulated to draw on the expertise of the panel and both the experiences and perspectives of the audience. This program is organized to ensure that speaker has a chance to provide their perspective while ensuring that a meaningful dialogue can take place between speakers and also with the audience. The program will conclude with an informal reception and light music. About David Barsamian: David Barsamian is founder and director of Alternative Radio, the independent award-winning weekly series based in Boulder, Colorado. He is a radio producer, journalist, author and lecturer. He has been working in radio since 1978. His interviews and articles appear regularly in The Progressive and Z Magazine. His latest books are Imperial Ambitions with Noam Chomsky and Speaking of Empire & Resistance with Tariq Ali and Original Zinn with Howard Zinn. His earlier books include Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky; Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire; and The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting. About Cynthia Peters: Cynthia Peters is a freelance writer and editor, a part-time worker at the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation, and a full-time mother of two. She writes about a wide range of topics including parenting, marketing, feminism, racism, and gender politics. For a sharp analysis delivered with humor and insight, check out what she has to say about advertising to teens, the pro-capitalist backdrop to "American Girl dolls," the institutions and cultural formulations that define "good" parenting, the trouble with day care, and much more. Tomorrow, Thu. Feb. 1, 2007, 4pm on WMBR 88.1 FM—Spherio Esther Cervantes and Liv Gold of the Dollars & Sense collective will discuss media issues and the National Conference for Media Reform with Sarah Olson and Spherio's hosts, Luis Melendez and Kendra Johnson. Spherio is a forum of exchange bringing together local communities and the academia around issues of cultures, societies, and politics important to our hemisphere. Labels: event, media, radio, war Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
