What Could Iraq War Money Buy?

Did you ever ask yourself what our country could do with the $300 billion being spent on the Iraq war? Well, a Minneapolis/St. Paul television reporter did and he sought the help of local college professor, David Larson, to come up with some suggestions.

[...]with $300 billion the government could simply hand out $1,000 to every American or about $47 to every person on the planet. We could buy a computer for every American child or for fun, the government could send every man, woman and child in the U.S. a brand new iPod.

"We talk about elementary school teachers and the fact that they aren't paid enough," said Larson.

With 94,000 K-12 schools in the U.S., $300 billion would give each school $3 million or provide a $100,000 bonus for every teacher in the country.

The average college tuition is $5,100 in the U.S. With 14 million students enrolled, just $285 billion would buy them all a four-year degree.

We could pay for all the losses from Hurricane Katrina and still have at least $100 billion left over. We could also pay all the out-of-pocket health care costs for every American for a year or fill all of our tanks for 12 months.

There are about 800 million hungry people in the developing world. It costs about $43 to feed each person for a year. With $300 billion the U.S. could end world hunger for about eight years.

We could do so much good for so many people with that kind of money, and this is based just on the current figure of $300 billion. Experts predict the cost of the war could approach $1 trillion before all is said and done.

Of course, money is not the only cost of war, and no dollar amount can ever account for the loss of so many lives - on both sides.