Other things Iraq war funding can pay for

Congress and President Bush have so far provided $119.4 billion for the war in Iraq. Here are examples of what else that money could buy.

– It could send 748,495 people, nearly everyone in Jacksonville, Fla., to Harvard University for four years. Based on Harvard’s 2004-05 school year costing $39,880 for tuition, fees, room and board, multiplied by four.

– Or send 2,806,506 people — almost all the residents of Chicago — to the average-priced public university for four years, based on The College Board calculation that the average public college and university costs $10,636 per year, multiplied by four.

– Or buy a median U.S. home — median price $174,100, according to National Association of Realtors — for 685,813 people, slightly more than all the residents of Austin, Texas.

– Or buy a Cadillac Escalade ESV sport utility vehicle at the list price of $58,360 for 2,045,922 people, or every resident of Houston.

— Or purchase a $4,699 suite on the Queen Mary 2 for a six-day cruise from Southampton, England, to New York for 25,409,661 people, or one in 11 Americans.

– Or buy four-bedroom penthouse apartments at the Trump World Tower in New York, selling for $17 million, for 7,024 people.

In addition,

– $119.4 billion is about equal to the total incomes earned in 2003 by all the residents of Vermont ($19 billion), North Dakota ($18.5 billion), Wyoming ($16.4 billion), Alaska ($21.8 billion), South Dakota ($22.3 billion), and Montana ($22.6 billion), using figures from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

– If the $119.4 billion were divided evenly among Iraq’s estimated 25 million residents, each would get $4,776. That would be eight times the country’s $600 per capita income, an estimate an official of the United Nations Development Program made last November.

And using data from the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing,

– 119.4 billion $1 bills, with each bill 6.14 inches long, laid out end to end would stretch around the equator 465 times.

– 119.4 billion $1 bills, stacked flat on top of each other, would be 8,234 miles high.

– It would take 3,785 years to spend $119.4 billion at the rate of $1 per second every day.

(AP)

03.06.2004
Collective Bellaciao