Cost of Wars and National Debt Grow Higher

At casinos, I like to watch those progressive jackpot signs.  As the number climbs, I take some perverse pride in knowing that the roll of quarters I just went through added a little to what someone else will eventually win. 

When I haven’t been to a casino in awhile and I want to watch some numbers spin higher and higher, I check out two websites – www.costofwar.com and www.usdebtclock.org.

Both of these sites keep a running tally.  The war site shows the United States’ cost of the Iraq war, the Afghan war, and a combined total – just three figures.  I recommend that non-jackpot watchers start with this site.  There are only 37 digits to look at (12 each for the separate wars, and 13 for the total) and only the last 5 digits of each number increase very quickly.

Since 2001, the United States has spent $1,190,495,454,176 on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Wait, I mean $1,190,495,687,882.  I mean $1,190,495,963,660.  Well, maybe a better way to tell you is that, according to my watch, the number grows $100,000 every 18 seconds.

I remember when I was a kid trying to count as high as I could count.  I think I got over 2000 before I had to come in for lunch.  I wonder if I had kept counting, if I’d be over a trillion by now...* 

Anyway, in the past ten years, the wars have cost my family of three $11,575, or about $5 a day.  I quit smoking a few years ago.  So, in effect, I’m putting that savings towards the family’s share of the war cost.

That wouldn’t bother me too much if our country, or their countries, or anyone other than the “defense” contractors had gotten anything out of it.  While we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan, they’ll hate us and when we leave they’ll hate us more.  The gig was up when we were torturing prisoners.  There’s nothing we can do now to change their “imperial pig” view of us (except maybe allow about ten million Afghanis and Iraqis to emigrate here – but that’s a topic for another day).

If strobe lights bother you, don’t visit the U.S. debt site.  It has over 60 different figures that climb, climb, climb.  It only takes about 5 seconds to add $100,000 to the U.S. national debt figure.  That amount is now $14,355,138,924,508.  The debt per citizen is $46,110 and the debt per taxpayer is $128,949.  My family has three citizens, two of which are tax payers.  So we owe either $138,330 or $257,898.  I’m guessing it’s the $258K number. 

I don’t think I’ll ever pay any of that back.  I’ll just keep paying the interest along with everyone else.  It’s that perverse pride in knowing that I’m contributing to a bigger and bigger debt jackpot.  I wonder how long it will be before the game is over and we'll have to cash out.

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* I figured it out, and if I counted one number per second for sixteen hours everyday for the past 40 years, I’d only be at about 841 million.  It would take me another 47,525 years to get to a trillion.