Opportunity costs

[jhetley]

There's this concept in economics (or was, *mumble* years ago when I took two semesters of the Dismal Science) called "opportunity costs." It's the point on the balance sheet where you take into account what you _could_ have done with the money or other resources for a project, for cost/benefit ratios and such. Would those resources be spent more profitably elsewhere?

Anyway, with Shrub's pending announcement on Iraq, I contemplate what we could have done with those Iraq resources elsewhere, over the last several years. Even assuming all the blood, wealth, time, and equipment was still spent on war, where would Afghanistan be today if we channeled our efforts there, rather than moving the Taliban and Osama to the back burner?

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Oh, you want to spend Government money constructively? I was assuming that all that wealth was "earmarked" for killing people and blowing things up. Typical pork, sorta like setting funds aside for building bridges to nowhere.

I left the other categories as an exercise for the student.