The 80-year-old grandmother and the economic paradox of wars

The 80-year-old grandmother who dismantled the economic narrative of wars

A glass of lemon water, a sharp-witted grandmother and a youthful dose of irony were all it took to expose one of the deepest cracks in the official economic narrative. While a young man explained to her that prices rise "because of the war," she replied with the crushing logic of someone who has lived through enough decades not to fall for the story: "are you still going on about that war? The one with the madman in the wig?"

What came next is practically a treatise on political economy in three sentences: "when we could all be living so well, in peace, now that everyone has everything." Without realizing it, the old lady touched the core of one of the most uncomfortable debates for the establishment: if material abundance is globally achievable, why do we keep funding conflicts that destroy precisely that abundance?

The war business: private profits, public costs

Behind that popular bewilderment lies a reality that few analyses acknowledge: wars are an excellent business for a select few. While the grandmother observed that "poor people don't start wars," economic discussion forums were reminding everyone that companies like Palantir —the data analytics firm linked to the Pentagon— are now openly raising the need for "forced recruitment" because "the efforts of war must be shared by all."

The trap is obvious: the costs in lives and public debt are socialized, but the profits are privatized. Multimillion-dollar contracts with arms manufacturers, surveillance technologies and post-conflict reconstruction fatten portfolios that never appear in casualty reports. As one industry analysis summed it up: "thanks to wars we live as well as we do." A statement that, read alongside CPI data and rising debt levels, sounds more like sarcasm than truth.

The myth of "we all have everything" that inflation debunks

The grandmother took it for granted that "today everyone has everything." But the reality of 2025, with cumulative inflation that has made the shopping basket 20% more expensive in three years, contradicts that perception. The war in Ukraine first, the escalation in Gaza afterwards and the simmering conflicts in the Indo-Pacific have served as the perfect excuse to raise prices, cut labor rights and skyrocket military spending.

An economist analyzing this paradox will find a pattern: every major armed conflict since 2001 has been accompanied by an increase in military spending among Western countries, while household disposable income stagnated. The "shared efforts" Palantir demands translate into higher taxes and fewer public services. The profits, meanwhile, fly off to tax havens.

Popular awareness that the data confirm

The old lady with her lemon water didn't need ECB charts to understand it. Her question —"why is there any need to start wars every other day?"— is the same one growing in public opinion polls as inflation bites. According to the latest surveys by Spain's CIS (the official sociological research institute), more than 65% of respondents believe military spending is excessive and that social welfare should take priority. A percentage that rises when asked about specific conflicts where there is no clear national interest.

Curiously, those who defend war as "the engine of History" tend to be the very people who never fight in it or foot the bill. As one comment in analytical circles put it: "the trouble is it's the suckers who die." The sucker is not the Lockheed shareholder or the Palantir executive. It's the young person who can't make ends meet, the relative who enlists out of necessity, or the taxpayer who pays the bill twice: first in taxes, then in inflation.

An ending that doesn't end: when popular logic defies the official narrative

Without realizing it, the grandmother left on the table the question that should haunt think-tank economists: if technology allows us to produce more than ever, if productivity has grown and if resources are sufficient globally, why does peace remain a luxury and war a profitable business?

No macroeconomic headline answers that. But as long as grandmothers keep asking uncomfortable questions with a glass of lemon water in hand, the official narrative will have a competitor that is hard to silence.