I’m still pretty incensed about Larry Niven’s comment (from my last blog), so thought I’d put together this necessarily sparse little primer regarding finances. Niven thinks that a major cost haemorrhage for the United States are the “illegals” using medical facilities. However, if I may, I’d like to present the following financial reality:

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing the United States $5,000 per second. $300,000 a minute. $18 million an hour. $432 million a day.(*)

In view of that, do you really think that “illegals” using US medical facilities and then nimbly skipping out sans payment are costing the United States even the equivalent of ONE DAY of warfare? Let’s say, yes. In fact, let’s be really hard-nosed about this and state unequivocally that such payment avoidance is costing the USA a whopping One Billion Dollars a year. We all agree that’s a lot, right? Sorry, that’s only a little more than two days’ worth of warfare.

Whether you like to admit it or not, the war is the elephant in the room that nobody, apparently, can see.

One week’s worth of warfare is about $3 billion. What would one week of warfare funding do for the US economy? Do you think hospitals could use $3 billion? Schools? Infrastructure? Social services? Remember, that’s just one week of fighting we’re talking about.

The obvious objection to this is that this is American money and thus America should be able to dictate how it spends its money and “illegals” “sponging” off the system are really not on that list at all. Okay, but guys, I’m sorry to break this to you, but it isn’t American money. That $432 million a day? It’s not coming from US coffers. A lot of it’s on loan from other countries. As of June 2007, the US owed Japan $644,000,000,000, China $350,000,000,000, the United Kingdom $239,000,000,000 (now, that one raises some interesting questions for me) and sundry oil-producing nations $100,000,000,000. This comes up to a total of $1.3 trillion, on figures that are nine months out of date.

(As a side-note, from someone outside the US completely, this devaluing of the US dollar is a very smooth, sneaky trick on the part of the Fed that essentially devalues the Treasury securities that the foreign governments own (like [US government issued IOUs] on the money countries have loaned the United States). In other words, the $644 billion that Japan now holds in Treasury securities/IOUs is not worth what they were a year ago. Nyuk, nyuk to you, creditor countries.)

And, amidst all this, Niven thinks medical costs are an issue?! I suppose it’s just as well that he’s a science-fiction author because at least he can appreciate the view from that other planet he happens to be on.

Please note that I’m trying very hard not to make any moral statements on any of this; I’m looking at this purely in terms of finances. If you were a person doing this, then you’d essentially be borrowing massive amounts of money from whomever you could, to throw parties for strangers, while ignoring your own livelihood . While the grass grows, the car goes unserviced, the children starve, the mortgage debt increases, and the house slowly decays into the earth, Larry Niven comes along and tells you that someone’s sneaking into your backyard and using your barbeque. Really, is that the most serious problem you have?

I’ve been following the writings of Paul Craig Roberts(**) on the nuts and bolts of the US economy (Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan), and what he says has been consistent over the past few years, and backed up by other articles I’ve cross-referenced. The savings of US citizens is in negative territory. Health, education, public services and facilities are suffering. Jobs in manufacturing and export-type industries are down. Jobs in service industries (which don’t translate into import dollars) are the only ones that are up, thus encouraging further domestic consumption, which encourages further imports, notably from China at this point. And, at the same time, the United States is massively building up debt to other countries to fund “initiatives” in other countries, and it doesn’t look like it’s stopping anytime soon.

Seriously, I wish you only had the medical costs of “illegals” to worry about. The truth is much worse … someone shoot off a probe and tell Larry.

---

(*) Actually, the Washington Post disagrees with me on this. It says that the cost of the war on Iraq alone is equivalent to $720 million a day, or $8,333 per second (as opposed to my $5,000). I’m just trying to be as conservative as possible, to short-circuit any accusations of exaggeration.

(**) I like reading Paul Craig Roberts because he’s a conservative, and is a lot more difficult a person for Republicans to argue with than a liberal. Roberts still believes in Reaganomics, so if he’s sending a warning to Republican administrations regarding fiscal responsibility, then I certainly perk up. I, on the other hand, am neither Republican nor Libertarian nor Democratic (all of which shade the right side of the political spectrum).