You do the math.

Someone told me a couple of years ago that he thought we needed to militarily intervene in Iraq because “Somebody’s got to teach those people how to think, don’t they?”

Well, if we wanted to teach them to think, maybe we could have spent our trillion dollars (direct and indirect costs) a little better.

The cost of a 4-year degree runs about $50,000 (that’s a generous estimate, but it will do here). This means that for 1 trillion dollars we could have sent 20 million Iraqis to college.

Wait–the Iraq population over age 18 is only about 12 million. Okay, we could send them to graduate school too.

The point isn’t idle sarcasm–it’s to get a grip on the sheer magnitude of how much money/resources are being spent in Iraq. I think our politicians and public are basically innumerate, and don’t comprehend this. The amount of money is staggering, and for the same amount we could have come up with any number of more creative and effective solutions.

Most Americans Perceive a Negative Effect of Iraq War

Since March 2003, the Gallup Organization has conducted regular–every one or two months–polls of American attitudes towards the Iraq war. The results here are from the March 2006 wave.

Question 23. Do you think that U.S. involvement in the war against Iraq has had a positive effect on life in the United States generally, a negative effect on life in the United States, or hasn’t it had much effect on life in the United
States generally?

                  Positive   Negative   Not much   No
Date              effect     effect     effect     opinion

2006 Mar 10-12      21         58        18         3

Earlier results

2004 Jan 2-5        39         35        25         1
2003 Oct 24-26      32         33        33         2
2003 Apr 22-23      52         18        29         1

This question is asked to roughly half the sample, or about 500 adults. The other half of the sample is asked a similar question about perceived effect of the war “on you personally.” Responses to that question show a similar trend.

A complete report can be found here:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/16/iraq.poll/

At the Iraq war outset, the Bush administration produced an initial cost estimate of about $250 billion. They also announced that, using oil revenue, Iraq could “refinance its own reconstruction.”

Two economists, Linda Bilmes and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, have now estimated the total (current and future) cost of the Iraq war to US taxpayers to be roughly $1 trillion. (Assuming 150 million adult US taxpayers, that’s $6700 for each of us!)

Their estimate does not include costs of:

• Current and future deterioration in US quality of life due to failure to address domestic needs

• Opportunity costs of failing to direct resources to improved education, health, basic science, etc.

• Costs of possible future derivative wars (Iran, Syria, etc.)

Read their paper here:

www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/Cost_of_War_in_Iraq.pdf

Please post this on other blogs!