Stiglitz, who served for four years on Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and another three as chief economist at the World Bank, puts the cost of the Iraq war in context by detailing what one of these three trillions could have paid for:
- 8 million housing units or
- 15 million public school teachers or
- healthcare for 530 million children for a year or
- scholarships to university for 43 million students
Three trillion could have fixed America's social security problem for half a century. America, says Stiglitz, is currently spending $5bn a year in Africa, and worrying about being outflanked by China there: "Five billion is roughly 10 days' fighting, so you get a new metric of thinking about everything."
$16bn The amount the US spends on the monthly running costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - on top of regular defense spending
$138 The amount paid by every US household every month towards the current operating costs of the war
$19.3bn The amount Halliburton has received in single-source contracts for work in Iraq
