Hermit
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Re:Fear itself
« Reply #1 on: 2006-10-18 05:03:52 » |
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So true,
Thank-you.
Faulty risk assessment is a favorite topic of mine, it gets even funnier than this cartoon shows. Look at this neat little table.
As I observed at the time, one does not even need to look at statistics for the USA. Looking just at NYC Death statistics the WTC debacle vanishes into the noise. (Source: http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/vs/vs.shtml)
| Year | Population* | Deaths | Deaths/1000 | Deaths/Week | | 1991 | 7,388,000 | 72,421 | 10 | 1,393 | | 1992 | 7,455,000 | 71,001 | 10 | 1,365 | | 1993 | 7,522,000 | 73,408 | 10 | 1,412 | | 1994 | 7,590,000 | 71,038 | 9 | 1,366 | | 1995 | 7,658,000 | 70,769 | 9 | 1,361 | | 1996 | 7,727,000 | 66,784 | 9 | 1,284 | | 1997 | 7,796,000 | 62,506 | 8 | 1,202 | | 1998 | 7,866,000 | 61,010 | 8 | 1,173 | | 1999 | 7,937,000 | 62,470 | 8 | 1,201 | | 2000 | 8,008,278 | 60,839 | 8 | 1,170 | | 2001 | 8,008,278 | 62,964 | 8 | 1,211 | | 2002 | 8,008,278 | 65,490 | 8 | 1,259 | | 2003 | 8,008,278 | 61,101 | 8 | 1,175 | | 2004 | 8,008,278 | 62,057 | 8 | 1,193 |
*Uses Census data
2001 Excluding WTC deaths
| Year | Population* | Deaths | Deaths/1000 | Deaths/Week | | 2001 | 8,008,278 | 60,218 | 8 | 1,158 |
Now put the money into some sort of perspective.
Cost of the BushWars to date: $1.5 to $2 Trillion (Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes)
Cost per American: $5,000
Annual Cost of Education: 693 billion (UNECE)
Cost per American: $2,310
Annual Cost of Social Security: 430 billion (UNECE)
Cost per American: $1,433
Or for other "nearly comprehensible models" of a trillion dollars, (borrowing from an interview with Stiglitz by Bob Herbert [pdf])
Quote:
In an interview, Mr. Stiglitz said that about $560 billion, which is a little more than half of the study's conservative estimate of the cost of the war, would have been enough to "fix" Social Security for the next 75 years. If one were thinking in terms of promoting democracy in the Middle East, he said, the money being spent on the war would have been enough to finance a "mega-mega-mega-Marshall Plan," which would have been "so much more" effective than the invasion of Iraq.
It's not easy to explain just how much money $1 trillion really is. Imagine a stack of bills worth $1 million that is roughly six inches high. (Think big denominations — a mix of $100 bills and $1,000 bills, mostly $1,000's.) If the six-inch stack were enlarged to the point where it was worth $1 billion, it would be as tall as the Washington Monument, about 500 feet. If it were worth $1 trillion, the stack would be 95 miles high (or about 5 times the height of the Earths tallest mountain). |
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