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Other things Iraq war funding can pay for

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 3 June 2004
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Edito Wars and conflicts Economy-budget USA


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

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