

The Billion Dollar Gram - andreyf
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-billion-dollar-gram/

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tel
It's a pretty graph, but oh do I ever wish it was just a bar chart or
something. Comparing areas accurately is difficult.

For instance, comparing the Chinese gov't stimulus package versus the New
Deal. The two squares look just about equivalent despite one being a full 14%
larger. Other methods of comparison could make that pretty clear.

~~~
kragen
14% larger _is_ just about equivalent. It's certainly within the error bars on
the inflation numbers. (Consider the price of a megabyte of memory in 1940
versus today, or free-range beef, or ivory, or Viagra, or insulin.)

A bar chart would make it hard to compare things more than an order of
magnitude apart, and a logarithmic scale would make it impossible to show
relations "A as a part of B".

~~~
tel
_Maybe_ in this case, but since he's not showing the error bars nobody really
knows. The question of whether 14% difference is significant isn't even
something you are able to cogently discuss within the bounds of this
infographic.

Multiple comparisons across bar charts could cover the same points of the
current chart (you're not really comparing things of greater than an order of
magnitude apart with any sort of accuracy), but I'm also not terribly
defensive of the bars. There's just nothing all that great about area
comparisons of squares, especially when the layout is somewhat arbitrary.

~~~
kragen
We know he's trying to correct for inflation, and we know the error bars on
inflation numbers over such a long period of time are pretty enormous. How
much Xanax would you pay for a house with an uninterrupted view of old-growth
redwood forest?

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reitzensteinm
$515 billion to shift entire world to renewables? That's got to be off by 2
orders of magnitude.

~~~
eru
In which direction?

~~~
reitzensteinm
Upwards - It would probably take more than $1 per person!

I'm assuming the number was originally a guess at the money that would have to
be poured into research to achieve RE < C, because less than $100 per person
for a total switch to renewables is clearly wrong. That's a bit too handwavey
to be included amongst other hard figures on a graph like this though.

~~~
eru
Yes, it's a bit hand-wavy. Though after RE<C the transition is essentially
self-funding.

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jrockway
Hey, now I don't feel so bad about the Iraq war anymore! We found a different
boondoggle to waste all our money on.

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nazgulnarsil
standing armies can only exist because of universal high taxation which is a
relatively new phenomenon. monarchies couldn't afford major wars because they
only raised about 10% in taxes.

and of course once you have a standing army you have to justify its expenses.
use it or lose it as they say.

~~~
eru
I would not use "monarchies" as the contrast. There have been republics in the
past, too.

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mhb
I don't understand the value of this being a 2D representation. Wouldn't the
data be easier to understand in a bar graph?

Also, why is it called _The Billion Dollar Gram_?

~~~
mbergins
I believe the "Gram" part of the title comes from the names of other types of
plots. For example, histo _gram_ or correlo _gram_. This plot deals with
dollar values in the billions, hence "The Billion Dollar Gram".

Edit: fixed italics

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ryanwaggoner
Damn this makes me angry. Look at all the awesome shit we could pay for if we
had the motivation...arg!

~~~
jrockway
Seriously. Cancel the Iraq war and everyone could get free cocaine!

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lionhearted
By the way, for military economist types - could someone explain to me exactly
why the Iraq war costs so much? I mean, what specifically costs?

You've got increased wartime pay to soldiers, and pay to defense contractors.
Energy costs and munitions. Construction and military engineering...

...and then what? It's a counter-insurgency, it's not like the military is
unloading cruise missiles or nuking cities or getting aircraft shot down. What
costs so much? Once the conventional warfare ended, the military
construction/engineering/bases were built, and all the troops and gear were in
place, wouldn't the costs be not-so-highly elevated over keeping a standing
army and regular training? Just ammunition, increased wartime pay, and defense
contractors no?

I guess it's kind of an ugly supply chain in hostile territory in the desert,
but Saudi Arabia and Turkey are nominally allied, so it shouldn't be too hard
to buy/ship food and ammunition through there. There's lots of cheap oil and
refineries nearby. Where's all the money going?

~~~
321abc
I'm not a military economist type, but I'll take a stab at this.

Apart from the costs you cite, which are certainly significant, there's the
cost of replacing equipment, much of which dies quite quickly in the desert.

There's also the cost of oil (which the US buys, and doesn't just steal out of
Iraq's oil wells, as far as I know). Believe it or not, the US military is the
largest single consumer of oil in the world. Here's an interesting article
about it:

<http://www.energybulletin.net/node/13199>

From the figures in that article, I'd estimate that the US military uses about
$10 billion a year in oil, at today's prices.

Contractors are a huge expense. From what I've read, there are as many
contractors in Iraq as there are US military personnel, each getting paid
much, much more than a soldier.

According to the following article, the US spent about $100 billion on
contractors between 2003 and 2008:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7557995.stm>

Then there's all the money that's simply "lost". For example:

 _"How the US sent $12bn in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish"_

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1>

There are no doubt many other expenses, such as the new $600 million "embassy"
in Iraq (which is going to cost $1.2 billion a year to operate).

For more details see the Congressional Budget Office's report on the
_"Estimated Costs of U.S. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan"_

[http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/86xx/doc8690/10-24-CostOfWar_Test...](http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/86xx/doc8690/10-24-CostOfWar_Testimony.pdf)

and _"The Three Trillion Dollar War"_ :

[http://www.amazon.com/Three-Trillion-Dollar-War-
Conflict/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Three-Trillion-Dollar-War-
Conflict/dp/0393334171)

Unfortunately, as outrageous as the money wasted on the war is, the human cost
has been much worse, and it may not be fully paid for generations to come.

~~~
vijayr
These are some _very serious_ numbers you mention here. Just take a look at
this TED talk - _just $8 billion_ to halve the number of people without access
to drinking water.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pritchard_invents_a_water_f...](http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pritchard_invents_a_water_filter.html)

Imagine what can be achieved with hundreds of billions, if used
constructively.

$100 billion on contractors? wow

Why can't the US military increase the pay for the soldiers, hire more
soldiers and reduce the number of contractors? These contractors are in it
just for the money, don't have any respect for laws/human life as blackwater
has repeatedly demonstrated.

They should really think twice, thrice before starting any war, and especially
an unnecessary one.

~~~
jp_sc
s/war/invasion/g

Calling it a "war" is misleading.

Malthusianism? They invade to secure the extraction of the oil they need for
the invasion army.

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int2e
Some of the rectangle sizes look wrong. Compare "Walmart Profits" to "OPEC
Climate Change Fund". Compare Google to Facebook.

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michael_dorfman
That really is a beautiful visualization.

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jwecker
meh. To be fare I'd like to see "Worst Case" boxes for everything else...

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TweedHeads
Thieves.

The war on terror was an excuse to funnel billions to the pockets of
handpicked contractors in Iraq.

Then the stimulus, billions upon billions went to the hands of corporate thugs
who got fat checks to continue spending more and more without compromise.

Politics is the greatest robbery of all times and propaganda its greatest
weapon.

As long as they feed us manipulated news and keep us on the verge of mental
collapse, they will do whatever they want with us, and our money.

First, terrorism that wasn't, then the recession that didn't. I know they are
planning the next alarmist event to steal more and more from us.

~~~
fuzzmeister
Comments like this are why I no longer visit Digg and Reddit, and I don't like
seeing them on HN.

Also, please define "they". You can't just blame all of the problems in the
world on a pronoun.

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Ardit20
Someone forgot Afghanistan!

