I ran across this post today, and was left with my jaw hanging open... Go ahead and take a look, I'll wait...
Back? Good. Now for those of you who didn't feel like clicking, it was a graphic representation of the costs of the programs enacted over the last 12 months to combat the financial crisis as compared with some of the largest single item expenditures in our country's history -- like the Apollo program, the Korean War, and the New Deal, to name a few...
He did adjust the numbers for inflation, but a quick review of the comments shows that there is some significant disagreement over whether to value "investment" activity, like TARP funds that will be repaid as sunk costs...
I won't debate that here, except to say, that not valuing them ignores the fact that they are being paid for with Debt, which will have to be paid back with interest...
The only quibble that I have with the graph is that the author has assigned a value to the New Deal that I don't think is completely accurate... In the comments, the author mentions opportunity costs as part of the justification of calculating the costs of the recent programs, but I am not sure that the same opportunity costs were used in calculating the historical costs. Social Security is an ever-growing expense that came out of the New Deal -- and I don't think that he is including the current and expected costs from this program.
That said, the dollar amounts are staggering... The government is/will be issuing tremendous amounts of debt to cover these costs, and that is not something to be taken lightly...
Have these programs kept the economy from getting even worse? Quite possibly...but the bigger question is whether the costs of these programs will cause more pain in the long haul then the immediate pain would have been had they not been enacted.
Chancevs
What can LLMs never do?
7 hours ago
