Since 2001, the U.S. expenditure for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has been $16,000 for every man, woman and child in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the National Priorities Project we have to date spent $922 billion on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
In the CIA's world fact book, one finds that the current population of Iraq is 28,945,657, of Afghanistan 28,396,000, for a total 57,341,657.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/profileguide.html
Considering the current U.S. population of 300 million, the war has cost each U.S. citizen $3,073, or, if one thinks in terms of families, $12,293 for a family of four. Consider what we have spent waging this war in light of the fact that (2008 figures) per capita income in Iraq is $4,000; in Afghanistan $800.
http://siakhenn.tripod.com/capita.html
How might even a small fraction of such money have been spent differently to "win hearts and minds"?
And to a "bailout":
Henry Paulson, of Goldman Sachs/U.S. Treasury, a central figure in the financial collapse, demanded $700 billion, no strings attached, or the system would, he warned, crash. That was a demand for an immediate $2,333 from each citizen ($9,333 per family of four).
Note: This year, Goldman Sachs employees are slated to receive $16.71 billion in bonuses, an average of $530,000 per individual.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091021_zooming_in_on_the_years_biggest_hoax/
There is evidence that the war has been based on lies and that the Wall Street crash was predictable, indeed inevitable and possibly engineered. In any event, these two situations alone add up to $5,406 for each U.S. citizen ($21,626 per family of four), and the figures do not begin to count future costs due, for example, to long term care for military.
But then, it seems almost minor next to a U.S. national debt of $11.9 trillion, which is nearly $40,000 per citizen.
Are the Chinese smiling?
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