I’m just futzing around on the internet looking at statistics about the cost of the war, and comparing them to what we could be otherwise spending that same amount of money on. I thought I’d throw up some numbers just for the heck of it.
- From the U.S. CBO (Congressional Budget Office), an estimated total for the cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq occupations, including interest (because we spent money we didn’t have), through the year 2017 (which is the earliest they are expecting to be out of these wars): 2.4 trillion [1], which, broken down over the 16 years from 2001 (when Afghanistan was first occupied) ’til 2017 (when the CBO expects to be done), will cost an average of $150 billion/year. This is more than $10 billion/month.
- From NationalPriorities.org (“National Priorities Project (NPP) is a 501(c)(3) research organization that analyzes and clarifies federal data so that people can understand and influence how their tax dollars are spent. Located in Northampton, MA, since 1983, NPP focuses on the impact of federal spending and other policies at the national, state, congressional district and local levels.” [2]), using the Trade-Offs tool (“Could your tax dollars be better spent? Select your state, town, county or congressional district and a program, and find out what else your tax dollars could provide.” [3]), I found that, using data from IRS records, taxpayers from Seattle alone have paid $1.4 billion on the war in Iraq so far, which could be used to:
- Provide healthcare for 225,711 people for 1 year (over the 5 years of the war: 45,142 people with healthcare/year)
- Build 7,861 affordable housing units (”During the One Night Count of January 2008, it was found that 8,439 people were homeless in King County, Washington. 5,808 had shelter through existing programs but 2,631 were without, a 15% increase over last year. 34 homeless people have died outside this year alone.” [4]).
- Pay the salaries of 23,268 elementary school teachers (over the 5 years of the war: 4,653 teacher salaries/year)
This is gnarly. These numbers are just local numbers for the city of Seattle. I figured it would be interesting to make the big numbers from the first report very local and tangible. The crazy thing for me, and the one that started me on writing this post in the first place, is that first trade-off. In a city with a population of 563,374 [5], 45,142 people’s healthcare paid for would be a big deal. How anyone expects to pay for universal healthcare, publicly administered or privately administered, with such an astronomical amount being spent on the war is anybody’s guess. The money we are spending on solving international problems that are none of our business (See: CIA’s final report: No WMD found in Iraq) could be helping people here.
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