citizen: you’re paying $6500+ for war in iraq
since i can’t quote without permission, i’ll just cut to the simple math (someone else has done the hard math).
an economist with some street cred among economists has published an estimate of the cost of war in iraq as high as $2 trillion.
visiting the population clock gives a current us population of 297, 869, 425 (give or take).
$2,000,000,000,000 / 297,869,425 = $6714 and change.
that is not entirely fair, since a good portion of the cost is being borne by non-us citizens, and i’m using the high estimate from the paper as opposed to the low estimate.
but, let’s put this in an historical context…
White House Cuts Estimate of Cost of War With Iraq[NY Times via The Iraq Foundation, 2 jan, 2003]The administration’s top budget official estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion
in case you’re keeping track of the zeroes, that’s a little more than 33 times the white house estimate. 16 if you’re feeling conservative.