150,000 American lives have been wasted in the Iraq war. A cookie for anyone who can figure out (generally speaking) how I arrived at that accurate figure.
Wasted semen? I'm sure there's a higher-than-average amount of jerking off going on over there. Lord knows I'd need lotion after a few months away from home.
Roughly 150,000 troops are over there at any given time and not contributing to the domestic work force?? Interesting point if that's what you're getting at, but it's unfair to include military regulars in that figure, only Reserve/NG troops.
It's also pretty misleading to characterize that as "wasted lives" in the same arena where men and women are getting killed. Hopefully that's not what Ben's going for. Because I disapprove, by golly.
Alex gets a cookie crumb. I would never describe American soldiers risking their lives for our country as wasting their lives. I have too much respect for them to say anything like that. The figure is roughly the amount of money 150,000 typical Americans would earn in their entire lifetime. So, in fact, we've devoted 150,000 people's entire working lives to this war. If we devoted a similar amount of resources to health care, auto safety, road saftey, ect. we would save a substantial number of lives. Sorry to be a tad hyperbolic and possibly get your disapproval, but I wanted to put into perspective the enormous resources we're putting in to this war. Dollar figures don't seem to do the trick. Having said that, whether these 150,000 average American working lives have been wasted or not depends on future events, but make no mistake about what we're devoting to this war. A war we were promised would pay for itself.
In fairness, the War on Terror has cost an additional $25+ billion dollars when you add in the cost to the US economy of the 911 attack.
It's like Bush decided to put the war on OUR credit cards. Well, the payments will be difficult to make, and that takes our hard earned dollars away from things we should be spending it on.
Ben, I'll be in KC a week and a half from now. Can I really stop by to get a cookie if I get it right? what about a happy meal instead?
Some tax reformers like to look at Tax Freedom Day, as the first day that you've completely paid your taxes and can accumulate your income as your own, rather than for some government entity. I propose two other adding two other freedom days (although most Bush supporters need to pull down their pants to count to three.) Debt freedom day - US debt is at $7,500,000,000,000. Short-term T-bills are paying just over 2%, or $150,000,000,000 per year. Every worker needs to put in 3 days of work to cover the national debt. This does not even buy down the debt, just servicing the interest payments. Iraq war cost freedom day - $180B/20 months = $9B/month, or annualized at $108,000,000,000/year. The size of the US economy is $11,000,000,000,000, so the war cost is about 1%of the US GDP. In other words, every American worker needs to work 2.5 days per year to pay for the war. (or about 150,000 workers for an entire year.) We can call the extra week of work "Bush week" in honor of our incompetent leader.
Actually it was a Stephen Forbes quote about a year ago on CCN Finance network. It included replacement cost of the towers, projected insurance settlements to victim's families, lost revenue for businesses affected directly or indirectly by the attack, etc.
So not only is it a year old, but it doesn't take into account the military and homeland security dollars, not to mention what the average citizen has spent on duct tape and Hefty bags in acticipation of a chemical attack.
In a NY Times article about vaccine development a couple of weeks ago, the figure $1 million (or something like that) was mentioned as the bottomline for the worth of an average US life (in terms of how the federal government/public health authorities decide how to distribute limited resources). For example, spending $1 billion dollars to develop a new vaccine that can save 100 lives is not justifiable. If that vaccine can save 2,000 lives, its development may be worth funding. (What was not totally clear to me from that article was whether that $1 million was for each life or each life/year. I just assumed that it was for each life.