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A few sources I have seen put the entire multi year cost of world war 2 in 2021 dollars at $4.1T. Where as it looks like congress has spent ~$4.5T fighting cov
by anm89 5y ago
A few sources I have seen put the entire multi year cost of world war 2 in 2021 dollars at $4.1T.
Where as it looks like congress has spent ~$4.5T fighting covid in the last year and that's before looking at fed balance sheet increases of ~$3.5t.
So we have solidly spent more than WW2, almost double in a year or covid relief, a lot of which was fed balance sheet expansion(ie printed money)
I independently came up with this but it looks like others have made the same observation
https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-covid-relief-package-cost-obrien-20210312-3bi5g7uxgfe6ngbfutj7luudey-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion...
In fact the CT makes the claim that covid relief has almost equaled the cost of all American wars combined.
Pretty mind blowing.
- bildung 5y agoIt's always important to compare the whole economy, not just a single number. For context, the median income in 1940 was $18680 in 2021 dollars ($956 in 1940, https://www.npr.org/2012/04/02/149575704/the-1940-census-72-year-old-secrets-revealed https://www.npr.org/2012/04/02/149575704/the-1940-census-72-...) So in terms of the income of the average US man[1] in 1940 the WW2 cost was double the nominal number alone. [1] The source above explicitly says man, not person, so presumably the median household income was even less than half of today's numbers.
- okl 5y agoI think those numbers should be given relative to GDP or per-capita. Since 1940 the number of US residents has more than doubled, US GDP has increased by 10x.
- emerged 5y agoIt’s infuriating every time someone even refers to these things as “COVID relief” because that isn’t what it was. That the banner held up to make everyone support it, but that isn’t what it was. No matter how many times people repeat the semantic trick I refuse to accept the lie.