Spooner predicts Iraq cost at $100 trillion!!!

Not really, but as long as we're playing competitive prognostication, why not take a kick at the can. I'm on record as estimating that the cost of the Iraq invasion will be about a half trillion dollars. I'm sort of taking the official guesses of a couple hundred billion and adding a large fudge factor.

But I have been completely upstaged by a new study that says it could be a couple trillion. "Economists say ..." begins the headline in the Boston Globe. It sounds so much more authoritative than "Astrologers predict ..." but it isn't a lot better founded.

The problem is that the study has wandered into "economic impacts," a practice that has less and less connection with reality as the subject gets larger and larger. The economic impact of a new mill being built in a small town may make some sense. The gross long-term impact of the war in all its guises? Compared to what?

Two trillion dollars is a big number. I have the same reaction to it as I do to the prediction of rising oceans due to global warming. I've been hearing about this for 20 years. I live next to the ocean. If the problem will eventually become huge, then it should by now be noticeable. It isn't.

The study (although I haven't seen the details) evidently includes a consideration of the impact on US productivity. This is perhaps based on calling up guardsmen and reservists and thereby removing important skills from the civilian economy. Unfortunately for the study, productivity has continued to rise while we've been at war.

The war is presumed to have a bad long-term impact on the federal government's finances. Here's a contrarian thought. The war will cause a fiscal crisis that will force Americans to deal with the entitlement problems facing the country. The Social Security crisis looming two decades hence will be avoided.

Sheer speculation? Of course. It's all speculation. I could probably hit $500 trillion if I tossed in the compounded additional interest expense for 500 years. It might earn me my fifteen minutes of fame.