November 2008
The Wages of Irrational Greed
The actual costs of several of the items can be debated, especially in the case of warfare and its soft and collateral costs. Joe Stiglitz has estimated the cost of the total Iraq war to three trillion dollars when all the expenses are considered.
One can quibble with the details, and even make the case that any expenditures financed by debt are of equal economic value, that there is no difference between pure consumption and greed, and productive investment in infrastructure. That there exists no good or evil and that justice has no penalty or value.
But one has to ask what could have been accomplished, what great achievements could we have endowed to posterity, if we had only restrained the greed of Wall Street and the corruption of the world's economy through the US dollar as its reserve currency which permitted the almost unrestrained creation of debt by a succession of narcissists and sociopaths?
If this chart is not shocking, does not sicken you at heart, repulse you, fill you with righteous anger, make you feel ashamed, then you may be emotionally a child, or perhaps no longer human.
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