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More Stupid Shit: Gaza Rubber-gate Edition [1]

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Date: 2025-01-29

In response to the foreign aid freeze order being enjoined by a Federal Court, the Administration dusted off out a classic small government conservative shtick. They pulled a misleading number out their butt, $50 million in condoms for Gaza. In all fairness, the left have done the same with defense spending. Recall the $600 hammer.

The beauty of citing condoms, however, is it's vintage culture war: rich puritanical notes with a strong 'just say no' finish. Taxpayer monies encouraging shtupping in Gaza, subsidizing teenage libertines? As Colonel Kurtz would put it, "the horror, the horror."

While I am certain this administration is lying about the number in so far as I bet it is for family planning generally, I did some back of the envelope math using it anyway with one caveat. I am assuming those monies include services for the West Bank, and not just Gaza. Now to the stats…

Gaza is an incredibily fertile place. There were 3.38 children born per woman in 2023. This ranks Gaza 42nd of 224 regions. It has one of the highest population densities in the world with a growth rate of 2%, 39th highest in the world.

To put it succinctly. Gaza needs birth control... bigly.

The total population of Gaza is ~2 million, 500,000 of which are men of a fatherly age. In the West Bank, ~1 million fall into the latter group. So one condom a month over the course four years gives you 72 million condoms. Assume a condom is 50 cents and you arrive at $36 million.

Of course my calculations have obvious flaws. A bulk purchase of ~900,000 per year should bring the unit cost down from 50 cents significantly. On the other hand, government accounting procedures include medical and administrative man hours, facility costs, etc, with a magic formula that attempts to allocate a portion of fixed and variable costs to the disbursement of each condom.

Think of how DoD calculates flight hour costs of particular aircraft. It isn't just fuel and the hourly salary of the pilot. That's how you end up with a $600 hammer as well.

The bottom line? Using stupid accounting tricks to decry access to birth control for Gazans is some pretty stupid shit given the population pressures there. Using it as a basis to halt aid and undermine our credibility globally is a special kind of stupid shit.

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