Terrorism is one the greatest threats that the US has to face. A relentless wave of aggression taking innocent lives and inflicting huge economic harm on the country.
At least that’s what most people imagine, but just how damaging is it in reality?
From 2005 to 2025, the economic harm caused by acts of terrorism is estimated at less than $1 billion per year. Across that whole period, about 500 American citizens lost their lives to acts of terrorism. While insurers may be comfortable to put a price on human lives, I’m not. But obviously to the families and friends of those killed, each life was priceless. And those deaths are on top of the more easily estimated economic harm that totaled less than $20 billion across the 20 years.
While the wealthiest Americans aren’t directly killing Americans, their tax frauds reduce the ability of the US government to care for their citizens. If the government was better funded, perhaps they could provide the American people with publicly funded healthcare, like every other developed nation in the world.
Then, perhaps, Americans would live to 82 years, like people in their peer nations, instead of 77.5 years.
And the maternal mortality rate might be about 6.5 deaths per 100,000, as in developed peer nations, instead of 17.9 deaths. Which, with some 82 million live births across the 20 years, means 9,348 less American women would have died during childbirth.
And heart disease might kill 77 Americans per 100,000, instead of 113. Meaning some 2.44 million less Americans would have died during the 20 year period if the disease was treated as well as in peer nations.
But maybe you believe that healthcare should be the responsibility of individuals, not governments. Fair enough, but clearly we can agree that the national government has to take the lead in managing the national road system.
Deaths on the financially stretched US road system total about 12 per 100,000 people Vs the OCED nations’ average of about 4.09 road deaths per 100,000 people. Over the 20 years, that totals up to about 536,000 excess American deaths compared to similarly developed nations.
But the good news is that those deaths mean that even more money could be funneled to the wealthy. Which has helped the top 10% hoard 68.3% of all US wealth, while the poorest 50% share just 2.5% between them.
Like terrorism, it’s easy to quantify the economic harm of tax fraud (estimated at $3.5 trillion over the 20 years, compared to less than $20 billion lost to terrorism), but less easy to tie deaths and their costs directly to the missing taxes. But, just like acts of terror, acts of tax fraud that steal money from the public purse undeniably cause a huge number of deaths of innocent Americans. Deaths resulting from the damage caused to government services by the unlawful theft of funds by wealthy tax dodging Americans.
So, are wealthy tax dodging Americans effectively domestic terrorists?
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