How Many Died, Really?

One of the things that has bothered me the most about the Iraq War is the immense cost it has had on Iraqis. It makes it even harder when no one, least of all the American military, has been interested in quantifying the impacts on the Iraqi population. Instead, we were left with outside groups indirectly estimating the number of Iraqis killed - with one report concluding that as much as 600,000 Iraqis died.

Well, we finally have an estimate from the Iraqi government. Their report estimates that 85,000 people died, not including insurgents or foreigners. At first blush, I am tempted to trust the Iraqi government more than Johns Hopkins since they presumably have access to more information. (Then again, Johns Hopkins might be less inclined to fudge the numbers for political reasons.)

What is really frustrating about such wildly different estimates though is that it makes analyzing the impact on the Iraqis near impossible. Although 85,000 is not a small number, I could understand how that number might make the invasion worth it in the long run if Iraq becomes a democratic and stable society (not a foregone conclusion yet). But 600,000 is much bigger and seems much harder to forget.

Of course, whether the war was worth will be up to the Iraqis, who should have been the ones to call for our invasion to begin with. And when the Iraqis decide if the invasion was worth it, I imagine it will be the experiences of the people that lived through the invasion and the impacts on their lives that matter more than a statistic. People will likely judge the war by how many people close to them died, or by how many people (or themselves) were forced to flee the country during the height of the violence.

Saudi Arabi... Unbelievable

Remember this post? Well, if you thought that was outrageous, see this headline and article: Saudis Seek Payments for Any Drop in Oil Revenues

Let me get this straight, they want us to pay them if we pass climate change treaty? Somehow it is our responsibility to compensate them because they built their economy - and therefore their autocratic government's ability to rule - around one commodity that is finite and its overuse is harming our planet?

Saudi Arabia kills me.

Beautiful Graphs

This is awesome! I love the way technology is allowing us to see data in ways that make analysis and conclusions much easier.

Healthcare Markets

There have been two articles* I have read about market distortions in America's health care market. These distortions, namely the fact that consumers do not ever see or feel the costs of services, prevent cost savings and efficiencies. The arguments are compelling - certainly, the more we see and feel the costs of our care, the better we would be about choosing only the care that is likely to be effective.

However, the more we feel the costs (in other words, the more responsible we are for funding our care), the more likely it is that some people will not be able to afford certain necessary treatments. Maybe the people calling for this are right and that it would be cheaper to have a system where people pay for more of their care, and then have government support for people who cannot afford certain care that is too expensive. I still fear that people would be left out.

Once again we come back to efficiency versus fairness, the two opposing forces in economics. The question here is how inefficient are we (probably an extreme) and how fair are we (still not so fair - yet). Soon I'll have another post that looks more deeply at the health care proposal and how it does deal with the fairness and efficiency concerns.


*A side note - I do not think I am going to renew my subscription to The Atlantic. I get the feeling that they are trying too hard to be provocative and purposefully publishing articles that attempt to contradict "convention wisdom". I do not have a problem with that in general, however the articles that do have that feeling also seem to have a lot of data and arguments that are purposefully misleading - the healthcare article I linked to being one example and their recent marriage articles among other examples.