<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Jakester:
Assuming the economic cost of 9-11 to be $5B, would that jusify $5B per year cost of new security? I don't think it should.</font>
The economic cost was a lot higher than $5B. The company that leased the WTC wants to get at least $7.2B from its insurance companies.
Then add the cost of damage to the Pentagon, lost productivity of thousands of people who were killed, the campaign in Afganistan (and the perpetual cash we're going to be giving Afganistan in the future), cost of cleanup and rebuilding the Pentagon and WTC, cost for thousands of NYC residents to clean up, stock market decline, companies that went out of business, cost of the airlines being shut down for 3 days, cost of the government bailout (wasn't that at least $5B?), cost of new airport security and so on...
A lot of the cost is one-time, getting the equipment in place to screen bags. While there's going to be costs to maintain and operate that equipment, it's largely a one time deal that would be paid for by stopping one or two bombings.
d