I got the chance to stretch my economic muscles in a new commentary I published with The Century Foundation yesterday:

My favorite part is the ending:

. . . . Economists tally the price of war because it’s a language that American markets and voters understand, and because it’s a way to quantify war’s amorphous and sprawling harms and horrors.

But the worst negative economic impacts of war cannot be summed up on a ledger. War transforms the economy in a way that incentivizes more war. It robs society of other opportunities. It narrows policymakers’ choices, creating its own traps and logic.

That’s why the U.S. constitution requires the president to consult Congress before going to war—an obligation that different presidents have routinely ignored for decades, but which Trump has ignored with exceptional abandon.

As Trump sends thousands of Marines to the Persian Gulf, America finds itself unmoored from its principles. Congress must reassert its powers to declare war and spend money, by withholding all funds for this war. If the war continues, inflation, recession, and decades of expenses for veteran affairs could be the least of America’s problems.

Read the whole piece, “The Iran War’s Forever Costs Will Far Exceed the Immediate Pain for Consumers,” on Century International’s website.