What It Costs

With the candidates set for their respective runs for President of the United States, we are going to see some of the issues pushed front and center for each candidate to declare his position on and try and convince a majority of the voters that his is the correct and most beneficial one.

One of those issues that is perhaps the most important to the American public is the economy. There’s also the price of gas and the war in Iraq. There are many more issues for the candidates to differ on of course, but these are probably the most important for most people.

What a lot of people don’t think about is that these issues are all tied together. The price of gas, even though it is artificially inflated at the moment, in large part is governed by what happens in the Middle East. What we do over there has a direct impact on the price and availability of oil and consequently gas at the pump.

There are differing views on whether we should have gone into Iraq in the first place, whether we should still be there now and whether we should get out. I can see the arguments for staying the course but I don’t know if they are valid. I understand that we should at least facilitate a stable transition to self government there and not desert the people that have worked with us as was done after Desert Storm. We can’t just pull out if it puts people’s lives in danger by us doing so. We owe them that.

The fact is that sooner or later we do need to get out of there. They need to step up and take control of their own destiny and we need to get out. And I mean not just out of Iraq but out of the region altogether. It’s not our responsibility and if you want to know the truth, we just can’t afford it. Our economy is tanking and the money it’s costing us to maintain our military presence over there isn’t helping.

That’s another thing the average American doesn’t have a clue about, because they never really think about it.

If I threw out a figure of $40 billion, that would be a staggering amount of money to the average, hard working, tax paying American, right? I mean, most of us would be happy to hit the lottery for a couple million. We’d be set for life. Millions are big amounts of money, but Billions? Wow… I couldn’t imagine having that kind of money.

So if I said the war is costing over $40 BILLION, it wouldn’t be hard to believe, right? Right… The problem is, it’s costing us that EVERY MONTH. Yes, friends and loyal readers, that is what it is costing us every single month. The cost of the war in the Middle East has risen to over $500 billion per year. The projected total cost of the war is something around $1.7 and $2.7 TRILLION with some estimates saying it could reach as high as $5 TRILLION.

Now, if you have a little trouble comprehending the scope of these numbers, I’ll try and put it into perspective for you. Most people are familiar with a million. That’s the number you get to after all those hundreds of thousands, in other words, the number right after nine hundred ninety nine thousand, nine hundred, ninety nine.

A Billion is a thousand million. So if you know what it would be like to win that million in the lottery, imagine having a thousand of them.

A Trillion is a thousand billion. Let’s see… If you were to spend $1 every second, that’s $3600 ever hour, it would take you over 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars…

How long do you think it will take before we go broke?

I bet you're thinkin' now, huh?