Ryan and Zachary talk about how wars are not nearly as cheap or economically harmless as many Americans seem to think. Rather, taxpayers must give up enormous amounts of resources to fund wars halfway across the globe that have little to do with actual defense. Americans are still paying interest on the trillions spent on Washington’s many lost wars of recent decades.

Additional Resources

“On Paying for the Costs of War and War Loans” by Ludwig von Mises (1918): Mises.org/WES_09_A

“The Cross of Iron” by Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953): Mises.org/WES_09_B

“Fact Sheet on U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine” (U.S. Department of Defense, 4 April 2023): Mises.org/WES_09_C

“How the Fed Is Enabling Congress’s Trillion-Dollar Deficits” by Ryan McMaken (2021): Mises.org/WES_09_D

“War and the Money Machine: Concealing the Costs of War beneath the Veil of Inflation” by Joseph T. Salerno (2021): Mises.org/WES_09_E

“As the Pentagon Fails Another Audit, Congress Wants to Spend Even More on ‘Defense'” by Ryan McMaken (2022): Mises.org/WES_09_F

“Russia and Ukraine named as Europe’s most corrupt countries” by William Nattrass (3 February 2023): Mises.org/WES_09_G

Be sure to follow War, Economy, and State at Mises.org/WES.