Boston.com put together a very cool slide show of what $611 billion, the cost of the US’s war in Iraq, could buy. Some of the more interesting points were:
- Billed as the most expensive high school ever build, Newton North High could be built 4000 more times around the US at the cost of the Iraq war.
- 18 months of free gas for every driver in the US.
- You could convert every car in America to run on Ethanol, 9x over.
- 14 million years of tuition and board at Harvard
And some more pretty interesting stats. Note, I’m not suggesting here that these things are better/more important than the war, it’s just interesting to get some perspective with more common-worldly items.
But in fairness, the Department of Defense lost $1 trillion… no not billion, TRILLION, and no one seemed to notice. So my guess is that either this money is all imaginary, or we have so much disposable income that one will notice… OR we are borrowing it all and we are seriously fucked in 10 years 
