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   Pwnallthethings (pwnallthethings@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 07:41:05 JST Pwnallthethings

   in reply to

   In other words, if the US upped it's spend by, say, 25% and that reduced the length of the war by *just a whole week*, it would *make money*.

   It's a good example of how the size of war economics harms get truly insane really quickly, and get you to unintuitive places about just how much of the war costs end up as indirect, rather than direct costs.

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     Pwnallthethings (pwnallthethings@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 07:41:06 JST Pwnallthethings

     Gonna write this up in longer form, but folks complaining that the $45bn Ukraine costs are high miss two key points:

     1. The direct costs in (US) military aid are surprisingly small; in the order of $19bn this year, and $10.8bn committed (so far) for next year

     2. The indirect economic costs of the Russian war to the US economy (i.e. to the private sector not via the government) are in the order of $600-700bn per year. To pick a random company, it's nearly $6-10bn in costs to Apple *alone*.

     Rasmus Fleischer repeated this.