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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Marshall Plan considerably less costly than ongoing Saddam Takedown

Update & Correction:

*sigh* I grabbed NIPA table 1.1.6 instead of 1.1.5 for the historical calculations, which affects only the percentages to GDP.

The revisions are as follows:

4.94% of 1948 GDP or about 0.95% over the five-year life of the Marshall Plan. (I'm using 1948, not 1947, consistent with this article, I hope. Folks used GNP, then, until the main National Accounts presentation switched in 199?)

The total cost ratio remains unchanged at 7.4x, comparing the costs in current dollars, $98B for Marshall plan and circa $705B for "current costs" of military activities of the Bush-era "GWOT".

The comparative ratio goes down significantly, to 1.4x, however, comparing the 0.95% of GDP figure to about 1.5% for the current Bush-era "GWOT".

Of course, if one includes some of the other costs of the GWOT, ...



Cost of Marshall Plan in 1948, $13.3 billion, or 0.81% of 1948 GDP and 0.16% of GDP over the five-year life of the program.

Cost of Marshall Plan in 2007 Dollars, $98.7 billion (using GDP deflater), about 7.4x more costly.

"Current Costs" only of military actions to-date, $705 Billion (see table this page, lower left), or about 1.5% of all GDP since the start of OIF in March, 2003, which is 9.3x more costly.