sometimes I disgust myself with my own laziness. I hate procrastinating.
If only we could wage a war against poverty, then there would be LOTS of money thrown to it's cause.
according to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-dead-war-on-terror-costs_n_856390.html the US has spent 1.28 trillion dollars on the war on terror from 9/11/2001 till the death of Osama Bin Laden.
the current US population is around 307 million.
based on these numbers alone we have spent 4,169 dollars per person in the US on the war on Terror. what would happen if we gave the 1.27 trillion dollars spent on the war to people living in poverty.
according to wikipedia the current percentage of the US population living in poverty is 15% that is a bit more then 46,000,000 million people living under the poverty level in the US alone!
those numbers are STAGGERING! so if we hadn't spent the 1.28 trillion dollars on the war on terror we could have instead given that money to people living in poverty almost 28,000 dollars per person. What would that amount mean to an individual living in poverty? what would it mean to you?
So where did that money come from in the first place? The answer to that question is not clear cut, but some research will show that it came from taxes being paid, existing federal programs being cut of funds it used to get, and the list goes on.
What other money is the federal government spending on "wars"? we also have the war on drugs that is an active, ongoing, on NON-winnable war. according to http://www.drugsense.org/cms/wodclock we spent over 15 billion dollars on this war in the year 2010 alone! if we look at money spent on it from when this war was started we have spent untold amounts. These efforts began over 3 decades ago!
here is a basic timeline on the war on Drugs http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/cron/
Just thoughts i've had this morning.
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