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It's futile to attempt to value things as fractions of a war. While typically the dollar is a useful metric for the worth that society ascribes to something, pu

It's futile to attempt to value things as fractions of a war. While typically the dollar is a useful metric for the worth that society ascribes to something, public opinion on the importance of the Iraq war and the federal budget for the military are radically different. The annual budget for the entire USGS is $1.2 billion. NOAA has a budget of $5.6 billion. NASA has a budget of $19.5 billion. The NSF has a budget of about $2 billion. If these agencies dropped everything else and invested purely in this map, it would take about 5 years to create it. Or, yeah, you could buy not even 0.1 Iraq wars with those 5 years, if that sounded better...

stdbrouw 10y ago
I'm not sure I understand: why is it futile to attempt to value things as fractions of a war given that public opinion on that particular war is divided?
- 67726e 10y ago
  It wasn't nearly as divided at the start of the war.
- krona 10y ago
  Because it's poor accounting. Given the scale of the US military and it's annual expenditure just existing, to make a fair comparison you should at least take account of the marginal cost of the war, not the total cost. There is also the opportunity cost to take account of, but that's much harder (impossible?) to put an accurate figure on.
  - xapata 10y ago
    I thought the figure provided was the marginal cost.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      It is, of course. Nobody is calculating the cost of the war as the defense budget multiplied by the time. The cost includes about $750 billion in direct appropriations for the war itself (separate from the overall defense budget), plus numerous indirect costs such as additional medical care and disability payments to veterans, replacement of destroyed equipment, and interest payments due to increasing the national debt.
gbin 10y ago
The argument is strange. Nasa has been able to pull off the Apollo program for roughly $150B adjusted for inflation. Those are not real dollars neither because people supported it ?
mikeash 10y ago
It may well be futile, but I will never stop trying to convince people that we should spend less on war and more on science.
- LordKano 10y ago
  It's likely futile to try to convince people to spend less on war but convincing them to spend more on science is doable.

stdbrouw 10y ago

I'm not sure I understand: why is it futile to attempt to value things as fractions of a war given that public opinion on that particular war is divided?

67726e 10y ago
It wasn't nearly as divided at the start of the war.
krona 10y ago
Because it's poor accounting. Given the scale of the US military and it's annual expenditure just existing, to make a fair comparison you should at least take account of the marginal cost of the war, not the total cost. There is also the opportunity cost to take account of, but that's much harder (impossible?) to put an accurate figure on.
- xapata 10y ago
  I thought the figure provided was the marginal cost.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    It is, of course. Nobody is calculating the cost of the war as the defense budget multiplied by the time. The cost includes about $750 billion in direct appropriations for the war itself (separate from the overall defense budget), plus numerous indirect costs such as additional medical care and disability payments to veterans, replacement of destroyed equipment, and interest payments due to increasing the national debt.

gbin 10y ago

The argument is strange. Nasa has been able to pull off the Apollo program for roughly $150B adjusted for inflation. Those are not real dollars neither because people supported it ?

mikeash 10y ago

It may well be futile, but I will never stop trying to convince people that we should spend less on war and more on science.

LordKano 10y ago
It's likely futile to try to convince people to spend less on war but convincing them to spend more on science is doable.