Arctic_Menace Arctic_Menace:
So for the price of one G8/G20, we could have 38.5 Libya deployments that last longer? How in the Hell does that work?
We fielded 11,000 police and private security personnel (working on top of their own jobs, mind), and had to construct a good deal of what was needed for the summit on site, including roadblocks and so forth. This included journalist access, administration, public relations and so forth over multiple locations. I am not defending these costs -- the decision on whether or not they were necessary seems down to personal opinion, and I have no interest in reigniting that debate.
I certainly feel there was some wasteful spending. However, my reason for stating the above was to show contrast to the below.
Libya took pre-constructed implements and 531 personnel. That includes the crew of a singular frigate and seven jets, two Polaris refueling tankers, two Hercules transport aircraft, two Aurora Survellience aircraft, a Globemaster airlift craft, and a sea king helicopter. These assets have not been in continuous use save for some jets (the Auroras have been used 8 times). The total cost of creating these implements is tens of billions of dollars. Upkeep is also several billion dollars annually. The program maintaining the CF-18 costs is a quarter billion dollars each year. The availability of these jets required years of costs and updates, which would be well into the billions of dollars. And we are fifth in assets there, and we aren't alone in this -- unlike the G20, where the entire operation was on our heads.
By April, the war had already cost the States 76 million dollars. Costs were running at four million dollars a day. Other estimates at 40 million a month.
This, again, does not include the tens of millions of dollars of bombs used so far. Estimates indicate that this war may cost the States a billion bucks by the time it's done. One billion dollars. And they are supposed to be only support this time around.
26 million dollars is the cost to move these assets and to drop a few hundred bombs. You will notice that this value is restricted to that because that is how much those specifically cost. Since all other costs, including the tens of billions of dollars of hardware and tens of millions of dollars of salary (at least), are not included because they would have existed anyways, that is not included in this calculation. Not even "rent" of owning these assets, which I bet would make a nice 10 digit figure at the very least.
In addition, this war had multiple ramifications for such reasons as rises in oil prices (which costs you money), for example. The goal was for the G20/G8 to have ramifications (basically us bleating "invest here, invest here!") but given the timing I don't know what effect it will have.
While certainly you could argue "well, what about the buildings and roads used for the summit, should we use them in this calculation?", those roads and buildings will be used afterwards and are being used continuously. The personnel go back to work in their own cities and their own jobs. Much of our war resources are sitting idle. The soldiers and pilots are paid even if we are not at war.
Libya specifically cost
us 26 million. The ability for us to take part in Libya cost us tens of billions. With much different parameters, very different goals, via different methods (we are not sending soldiers to meet hordes of people on the ground) and hence, far fewer people involved.
... unless you are suggesting we should have used a multi-billion dollar aircraft to drop a hundred thousand dollar bomb on gathering crowds of protestors, doesn't that seem like comparing apples and oranges?
Like comparing the cost of an RV to a Boat. For the cost of funding our military in 2010, we could have had twenty summits of the same size. The nominal increase in GDP expected improved enough since October for us to have 20 more summits. Hell, if the Wheat Board really was independent of federal support historically, we could have had another 1 and a bit summits.
For the increase of infrastructure spending this year in real terms, we could have had 7.5 more summits. We could have another summit for unclaimed federal contributions for provincial infrastructure. None of my comparisons make complete sense either.
Don't get me wrong. There were some examples of very poor judgement and spending in regards to the G8/G20 -- but this is not the example, nor a good thread to make a stand on that topic with in my opinion. Sorry if I cause any offense, just my opinion!
![[B-o]](./images/smilies/drinkup.gif "Drink up")
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