Iran war has cost on average $246M per day in its first five months

Posted by onza 12 hours ago

Counter36Comment8OpenOriginal

Comments

Comment by OgsyedIE 12 hours ago

A fair accounting of the costs would discount the items that are old and were going to be used somewhere else or scrapped if not used here, halving or possibly even decimating this estimate of direct costs.

That is direct costs, however. The indirect costs are astoundingly huge, as we all know.

Comment by from_memory 2 hours ago

Does that cost include the loss of life?

Comment by 486sx33 10 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by exabrial 12 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by OgsyedIE 12 hours ago

Fear of armed reprisal for nonpayment..?

Comment by newtonianrules 12 hours ago

Yeah I mean, believe me, if I could cut the portion of my tax dollars that went to war to zero, I’d do so in a heartbeat. That’s just not how it works in the US though under either party.

Comment by AnimalMuppet 12 hours ago

There's a bit more to it than that.

Everybody wants the government to do things; nobody wants to pay for all the things that the government is doing. (If we had a balanced budget, tax rates would currently be nearly twice as high, which would provoke mass outrage and people being removed from office.)

Everybody has different lists of what the right things are for the government to be doing, but (almost) nobody has an empty list. Well, if it's going to do things, it has to get the money from somewhere. It's either tariffs or taxes or deficit. Deficit is the least honest.

So an honest person, wanting the government to do some things, should be willing to pay some taxes.

Comment by bryanlarsen 11 hours ago

Everybody also significantly underestimate what the government does for them.

"Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?" -- Life of Brian

Just imagine what business would be like if you couldn't trust that a contract you signed would likely be fulfilled. The government court backstop is what ensures that.

Comment by petesergeant 11 hours ago

There are a very small number of things I agree with r/Conservative on, but that this was a stupid war to start that America definitely isn't winning is one of them.

Comment by downrightmike 10 hours ago

Just like Nixon in Vietnam and Ronnie in Iran, the purpose isn't to win, it's to hold on to power