But wouldn't the Iraqis rather have the money?
Doing a little quick thumbnail math:
Making a somewhat random guess that Iraq constitutes 75% of that money, that would mean that roughly $600 billion will have gone to Iraq by FY2008.
$600 billion/27 million Iraqis = $22,222 /Iraqi.
Using the UN's estimate that an Iraqi family constitutes 6-8 people, that would mean between $133,300 and $177,700 will have been spent per Iraqi family.
The estimates for Iraqi income are all over the place, but, in effect, the US will have spent enough to have supported most Iraqi families for multiple generations.
(For a baseline might I offer, from CNN: "The median income in Iraq was equivalent to about $255 (366,000 dinars) in 2003 and decreased in the first half of 2004 to about $144 (207,000 dinars)." CIA Factbook: GDP - per capita (PPP): $1,900 (2006 est.))
(PS. With roughly 150 million US taxpayers, it's about $4,000 per taxpayer although that burden is not really evenly distributed.)
The Congressional Research Service estimates that as of May 2007, Congress has approved a total of about $610 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The $190 billion request for 2008, if fully approved, would raise that total to approximately $800 billion.
Making a somewhat random guess that Iraq constitutes 75% of that money, that would mean that roughly $600 billion will have gone to Iraq by FY2008.
$600 billion/27 million Iraqis = $22,222 /Iraqi.
Using the UN's estimate that an Iraqi family constitutes 6-8 people, that would mean between $133,300 and $177,700 will have been spent per Iraqi family.
The estimates for Iraqi income are all over the place, but, in effect, the US will have spent enough to have supported most Iraqi families for multiple generations.
(For a baseline might I offer, from CNN: "The median income in Iraq was equivalent to about $255 (366,000 dinars) in 2003 and decreased in the first half of 2004 to about $144 (207,000 dinars)." CIA Factbook: GDP - per capita (PPP): $1,900 (2006 est.))
(PS. With roughly 150 million US taxpayers, it's about $4,000 per taxpayer although that burden is not really evenly distributed.)
posted by mikevotes at
5:35 PM
2 Comments:
lets not forget (this is a quote)
"According to World Bank estimates, $54 billion a year would eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally by 2015, while $30 billion would provide a year of primary education for every child on earth.
At the upper range of those estimates, the $456 billion cost of the war could have fed and educated the world's poor for five and a half years."
By
Anonymous, at 7:27 AM
Yeah. I wrote a post a year or so ago that calculated the US could send hundreds of thousands of doctors, teachers, and community development people abroad for this kind of money.
By
mikevotes, at 8:54 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home