Cost and Opportunity Cost

When one begins to learn basic economics “cost” is immediately discussed. Shortly thereafter the concept of “opportunity cost” is introduced. The difference between “cost“ and “opportunity cost” is that “cost” represents the price of what you chose to do and “opportunity cost” represents the value of what you didn’t do/get because you paid the “cost”.

No one can doubt that the human cost of the war in Iraq, over 1,000 US troops have died, is a very high cost. Because that is universally accepted there is little that needs to be debated about it. It is every Americans duty to remember the sacrifices these young men and women have paid for their country, regardless of their own position on the war.

A different cost is the financial cost of the war in Iraq. It is presently estimated to be $200,000,000,000 dollars and the actual expense is growing daily. The opportunity cost of this war is that we have no money for head start programs because we have spent it in Iraq. The opportunity cost is that we have no money to continue to support the salaries of the additional 100,000 police officers that President Clinton put on the streets, for real homeland protection, because we have spent it in Iraq. The opportunity cost is that 45 million people, 15.6% of the population, will continue to remain completely uninsured because we have no money because we have spent it in Iraq. There are countless other opportunities for which we have had to say no, such as employment training, even though 8,000,000 Americans are unemployed. Most troubling is that we have no money to support our own homeland defense initiatives such as funding first responders and providing necessary equipment because . . . we have spent it in Iraq. (There are currently 5,000,000 more Americans without insurance than when Bush took office and 2,000,000 more unemployed Americans than when Bush took office.)

The idea that we had to attack Iraq to defend ourselves is not a fact. It is the result of a policy conceived and implemented by George Bush that said that America had to employ a new policy for the world that would make America pro-active and fight the fight against terrorists on their homeland rather than on ours. It is ironic that the terrorists in Iraq didn’t actually show up in Iraq until after the U.S. declared victory and had wiped out the Iraqi army.

I believe that for $2,000,000,000 we could get more bang for our buck by spending the money on policies and initiatives that benefit the American people, and still be just as safe here at home.