CostOfWar.com
is a project maintained by the National Priorities Project. It analyses federal data on spending in the war in Iraq, and produces a running counter of the total amount of money spent in the war in Iraq. At the time of writing this article, the war in Iraq costs $445,817,285,000.
$445,817,285,000. That's quite a large sum of money. And with large sums of money, sometimes it's hard to put them into perspective. So let's take a look at how the money could have been used otherwise. Instead of invading Iraq, 7,726,076 public school teachers could have been hired for a year. Or, 266,956,850 children could have had health insurance for a year. Back to education, 21,612,280 students could have been provided with four-year college scholarships.
This should give you an idea of the sheer amount of money that has been poured into the Iraq war - there aren't even 266 million children in the United States. Now imagine how much better off the economy would be if that money had been invested inside the United States.
The war sure hasn't been helping the common person in the states with their expenses: The price of milk has gone up from $1.40 for a 2-gallon pack to $5.14 for the same pack, (according to a US resident).
Good or bad? I say it's bad, but you decide. Just remember, 21 million 4-year college scholarships.
