War Is Making You Poor

Florida’s Rep. Alan Grayson has introduced the “War Is Making You Poor Act” to highlight the obscene amounts being spent on Iraq and Afghanistan. His bill would slash $159 billion “supplemental war funding,” giving it as tax breaks to the rest of us, and insist the Pentagon use its paltry $549 billion budget to pay for the ongoing carnage. Rich. You can co-sponsor here or see a neat video on the hidden costs of war below:

In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld estimated a war with Iraq would cost $60 billion. Five years later, the cost of Iraq war operations is more than 10 times that estimate. So what’s behind the ballooning figures? Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilme’s exhaustively researched book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, breaks down the price tag, from current debts to the unseen costs we’ll pay for many years to come.


A panel discussion with economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes regarding their new book, “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.”


Location: Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA)