My friend Poppy at Patridiot Watch started crunching some budget numbers yesterday and noticed that the costs of the war in Iraq, right now, add up to about $700 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Since his household has three people, that means $2,100 for his family. And based on the population of his town, that means $14.7 million for his local community.
Poppy then saw something interesting: his hometown spends more on Iraq than it does on itself.
In my town, dividing the population into our annual municipal budget local, state, federal and grant dollars spent — it turns out we spend less than $700 a resident. So each and every person in my home town will have spent more in the first 31 months of the Iraq War than they do on their own municipal services in a year.
He even created a handy-dandy spreadsheet so we can all play the same game at home. (You’ll need your town’s population and annual municipal budget.) It’s not entirely straight because Iraq costs extend beyond just one year, but it does help highlight just how incredibly expensive the war has become.