77 bikes for every person on earth
I saw this short but sweet analysis of the cost of the current Iraq war. Even at the low end ($523 billion), that’s enough to buy pretty nice ($500 each) bike for every man, woman and child on earth 77 times. Or, colonize Mars.
The end of national poverty? National healthcare? Free high quality education for every child through college? Rebuilding an efficient national rail system? A national hydrogen fuel infrastructure? Any one or more of these could be bought with the cost of this war. It’s astonishing how much money is being pissed away killing people in a desert halfway around the world.
It’s like the ultimate version of playing “what would you buy with $n?”. If the country won the lottery, what should we spend it on?
3 Responses to “77 bikes for every person on earth”
uh… right, good point… i got a bit turned around in my quick math. This is why i dropped math in college. Still, it’s a pile of money.
With my biases, I always play the “how much conservation land could you buy with that?” game. Of course, I’m usually thinking that about all the money that’s going to Mars exploration… :-/
As a rough estimate, that sounds like fuzzy math. Say 600 billion dollars divided by the world population of 6 billion…that’s only $100 apiece. Even at 6 trillion dollars, that’s about $1000 apiece. Of course, that’s a new Surly LHT or Cross-Check for everybody, which is pretty amazing.