OxBlog

Thursday, March 13, 2003

# Posted 6:40 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

DOLLARS AND SENSE (AND POUNDS): Reader KB reports that the BBC's commentary on the potential costs of a war with Iraq consists of many worst case scenarios and very little common sense.

As KB asked in a letter to the BBC, "What about the cost of NOT going to war?" Hard to put a number on that, but considering that Saddam Hussein will have an untouchable stockpile of chemical weapons if we don't disarm him now, I imagine military spending will rise to take that fact into account.

Anyhow, the really disappointing thing about the BBC's doomsday scenario is that it's so moderate. The BBC seems profoundly concerned that the UK may have to spend 10 billion pounds. Surely the BBC could've called Bill Nordhaus and gotten him to say that the cost of war will be 50 times that!

Frankly, the BBC's concern about this sort of pocket change reminds me of all the Oxford students who become indignant at the thought that they may someday have to pay a few thousand pounds a year for the privilege of attending their nation's best university. Show them a tuition bill from Harvard and they might realize that the British government is covering the costs of an education that will make them rich while the rest of Britain struggles to get by.
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