I'm taking a break. Here's a golden oldie. You can double the figures cited in this, since we're now up to a half-trillion allocated to the folly in Iraq:
When we hear that the war in Iraq has cost more than $225 billion so far,
it seems abstract. My calculator only has nine digits, you know? But
two thousand bucks a second really brings it home - literally. For my
family, that's two months of housing, or 20 weeks of groceries and the
occasional meal out, or about three times what we'll spend on
Christmas.
Still, it's the war's cost to our communities that ought to make us think hardest. The National Priorities Project has an excellent website that shows what our national budget decisions - including endless war and repeated tax cuts for the wealthy - really cost in terms of lost spending on health care, education, public safety, and affordable housing. For example, Idaho's $590.8 million share of the war (so far) could've instead been spent on sending 77,260 kids to Head Start or putting an additional 14,836 police, fire, or EMT personnel on the job.
Read it all here.
