If you think it’s difficult to read about the way America is wasting lives in Iraq, it’s just the beginning. In an article entitled “The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush,” Vanity Fair has examined the ways in which the Bush Administration has wrecked the American economy. There is lots of bad news to share, including this:
Think of the interest we are paying, year after year, on the almost $4 trillion of increased debt burden—even at 5 percent, that’s an annual payment of $200 billion, two Iraq wars a year forever. Think of the taxes that future governments will have to levy to repay even a fraction of the debt we have accumulated. And think of the widening divide between rich and poor in America, a phenomenon that goes beyond economics and speaks to the very future of the American Dream.
Joseph Stiglitz, the author of this article, is the former chief economist of the World Bank and a Nobel laureate. On the heels of this scathing report, consider this additional article reporting near-panic in light of recent Congressional testimony by Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke.
Last week, Congress raised the national debt ceiling — the maximum debt the federal government can borrow — to $9 trillion. It is the fifth such increase since Bush took office. Doing the math, if we divide $9 trillion by the U.S. population of 300 million, it means that every American owes $30,000.
The U.S. economy hinges on the hope that our creditors (China being the largest) don't suddenly call in this debt. The fear of such an action is one reason why American politicians play softball with China over issues such as human rights violations: the U.S. simply cannot afford to be too strident toward China, because holding U.S. debt gives China an economic WMD.
One other cost of all this debt is that it devalues the U.S. dollar relative to foreign currencies, which increases the price Americans pay for imported goods. Goods such as oil, for example. Were Bush not flushing a billion American dollars down the toilet every month in Iraq, we'd all be paying a lot less at the pump and we would not be worrying about the looming recession.
Grumpy: Your one billion per month must be a typo. The U.S. has averaged about $2 Billion per week over the course of the Iraq occupation.
For incredibly cogent yet depression stats on the money we are pouring into this misbegotten adventue, check out the National Priorities Project.
Further to Erich's comment, indeed, the actual numbers are hard to accurately estimate, in part because the Bush Administration grossly underestimates the actual costs. For example, they exclude costs such as long-term care for maimed American soldiers, interest on the additional national debt that Bush has used to pay for his occupation, higher prices Americans are paying for gasoline as a result of the global market instability, etc. I'll defer to the website Erich mentions as a good starting point for true figures.