Similarly, payments for a dead soldier amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death. This statistical value of a life in the US amounts to circa $6.5 million.
Joseph StiglitzThe country that's been most successful at that is Norway. The more typical countries are those in the Middle East where a small group seizes those resources, uses it to buy arms to make sure that they can oppress the remainder, and you get these great inequalities. So Canada is among the better performing of the natural resource economies, but it's still not up to the best performing.
Joseph StiglitzI think what they've been doing is largely almost in firefighting mode without a good conceptual framework - either at the micro or the macro level. Micro, you would ask: "What kind of financial or banking system do we want?" Macro, you would say: "What are the underlying problems in the structure of our economy?"
Joseph StiglitzOne of the real costs of the war is that our security is actually less than it otherwise would have been - ironic, since enhancing security was one of the reasons for going to war. Our armed forces have been depleted - we have been wearing out equipment and using up munitions faster than we have been replacing them; the armed forces face difficult problems in recruitment -by any objective measures,including those used by the armed forces, quality has deteriorated significantly.
Joseph Stiglitz