Woulda coulda shoulda, counterfactually speaking

Oh what coulda been. Gregg Easterbrook: "Add war costs back into the economy and the U.S. GDP would be around $16 trillion today, an annualized growth rate of roughly 3 percent for the last decade. At that level of growth, unemployment would be lower, deficits would be lower and the national mood brighter." Yes, all likely true, except for that whole 9/11 thing and the dogs of war it let slip. Apart from the tired "woe is us" lament, the point of this counterfactual is, what? Close our eyes when bad shit happens? I mean, would we have saved millions of lives and billions of treasure had we stayed out of WWII? Without a doubt. Never mind that speaking German, goose-stepping and a countryside dotted with concentration camps ("Arbeit Macht Frei") would likely be our fate today. Easterbrook's thesis is: "What would the economic recovery look like if that money hadn’t been spent?" A better question to ask is what economic lessons have we learned as we engage in a world we cannot hide from.