Is this an anti-war site?
No. The purpose of this site is to illustrate the costs of the war in terms that the average person can relate to. Most of us have no concept of billions of dollars, much less hundreds of billions of dollars. You may look at the site and decide that $310.25 (85c a day) is a perfectly valid expenditure.
This site is designed to facilitate discussion about how we spend our money and the trade-offs that we have to make. Communities across the nation spend weeks, months and decades deciding how to spend much lesser sums of money - in Minnesota, for example, the debate on whether to build a stadium for the Twins lasted more than a decade.
Yet Congress has handed the Bush administration a blank check for the war. And it has done so outside of the usual budget process, through supplemental appropriations.
How accurate is the cost of the war?
The number used for the cost of the war on this site is based on Congressional appropriations reported by the Congressional Budget Office.
Unlike the Bureau of the Public Debt, which publishes a daily update on the national debt, the Pentagon does not publish the cost of the war.
There is a lot of disagreement on the true cost of the war. There are also questions about what goes into the cost. For example:
- Do you count Afghanistan and Iraq? There is not a clean break in these expenditures. The numbers on this site include Afghanistan.
- Do you count the interest incurred on the debt we are taking on to pay for the war? Most numbers (including the one on this site) do not take this into account.
- Do you count the value of lives lost? This site does not include that.
- Do you count the increase in gas prices that the public has been paying for? This site does not include that.
But there's no question in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Most of the comparisons on this site would not be substantially different if you used any reasonable estimate of the war costs.
If you believe the true cost is higher or lower, you can download the spreadsheet used for the comparisons and enter your own numbers. If you use Google Spreadsheet, email me (see below) and I will add you to the list of people who can access it.
How do I add my own comparisons?
Please post your comparisons on the blog. Please include links to the sources for any numbers you cite. I will update the comparisons to the main site. In the near future, I plan to create a Wiki version of the main page to allow direct editing.
Do you know that you can't buy companies for their market cap?
Yes. But in most of the examples, there is plenty of money left to pay for any acquistion premium. Again, the point is to illustrate the cost to people in terms they can relate to.
How do I send you email?
Send email to:
