Imagine All the Wonderful Things We Could Have Done with $501 BILLION

A few moments ago I was browsing the Internet and came across a Web site called National Priorities Project Bringing the Federal Budget Home . As I watched the digits on the Web site’s active Iraq budget change, I became memorized by how quickly the numbers continued to ad up. Within a few seconds, the number had increased more than the average American makes in a year. I continued to stare at my computer screen for several minutes, dumb founded by the reality of this utterly simple representation of such a horrific ongoing event.
At 8:30 am on Tuesday March 11, 2008 the U.S had spend over $501billion dollars on the war in Iraq. Please take a moment to really picture that quantity of money and all the things you could spend it on that could better not just this country, but the entire world. I know it is a lot to fathom, so think about it in relation to something specific, such as the budget cuts occurring in California schools, or even a specific city in California being affected. For example Long Beach, CA announced a few weeks ago that it was closing an elementary school and had already sent 305 employees notices of their termination. Recently the Los Angeles Times said that, “The San Francisco school district may take city "rainy day" money to help balance its budget.” Two completely different cities in California both being drastically affected by the budget cuts and guess what, it was only a $4.8 billion dollar cut over the next two years, compared to the $501 billion spent on the war. Now think about all the other budget cuts we could have prevented, or maybe how many thousands of people we could have saved from mass genocide around the world. There really are endless possibilities on where $501 billion dollars could have gone, maybe all American’s should take a minute to think about it.