Guns and butter, 2005 edition

When we talk about spending a billion dollars here or $200 million there, the numbers don’t mean anything. We have no perspective, or we’ve simply become dull to it all.

Congress and the President have spend like madmen in the last five years, pouring millions and billions of tax dollars around the world. We don’t think about it because it’s not real money to us.

But let’s make it real. Let’s put those numbers into a format that’s a little more recognizable: Textbooks.

According to the North Carolina State Board of Education, the average price of a high-school textbook is a shade over $52.00.

So the $223 million spent on that bridge in Alaska bought by Rep. Don Young (R) to service 50 constituents could instead have bought 4,288,000 textbooks.

But we think the bridge is more important.

$350,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland? That could have been 6,700 textbooks for Ohio schools.

How about $2.3 million for the beautification of California’s Ronald Reagan Freeway in California? That’s more than 44,000 textbooks.

But let’s not think small.

The Iraq War, according to the http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/54504.pdf”>Congressional Research Service, costs an average of $5.9 billion per month.

That’s the equivalent of 113,461,538 high-school textbooks, every month. (Elementary school books cost less — an average of about $35 — so it’s equivalent to even more of those.)

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2003 there were 33 million kids in elementary school in the U.S. and 17 million in high school.

In other words, for what we spend in Iraq in one month, we could just about buy every student in America, from kindergarden through 12th grade, three brand-new text books.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had plenty of school kids knocking on my door, selling gifts and candy and whatnot to raise money for their schools.

Perspective: use it or lose it.