When Statistics Leave One Speechless

My good friend Kara Martin originally posted this, and I felt like it couldn't just stop with me.

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I don't know what your views are, and my goal in presenting this information is not to sway you...it's just that I had thought myself to be a relatively informed citizen, but when these stats were brought up in my service learning class, pretty much everyone in the class was floored, and I feel compelled to pass the information on. On the news, you hear numbers thrown around so much that I think we become numb to them and millions and billions and trillions lose their meaning with us...this should put things back in perspective a little.

American taxpayers spend $195 million each day to fund the war in Iraq. For the amount we pay for ONE DAY of war, we could...

INTERNATIONAL FRONT:
- vaccinate 3/4 of the children in Africa for measles and give millions
lifetime protection from the disease.
- feed all of the starving children in the world today almost four and a half
times over
- build 5,571 AIDS clinics in Africa
- provide 650,000 women in Africa living with HIV/AIDS antiretroviral
treatment for one year
- provide 1/3 of the aid needed for earthquake relief for the four million
people affected in South Asia.
- is equivalent to half of the GDP of East Timor.

DOMESTIC:
EDUCATION
- cover the full cost of attendance for one year at a public college for more
than 17,100 students.
- enroll 27,000 more children in Head Start
- employ 4,269 elementary school teachers or 4,027 secondary school
teachers for one year.

HEALTH CARE
- provide health insurance coverage to 344,500 working Americans
- immunize every person over 65 in the U.S. against influenza 4.6 times
over.
- One day in Iraq could immunize every baby born in the U.S. last year
against measles, mumps, and rubella 14.2 times.

LABOR
- provide unemployment benefits for almost 722,000 unemployed
Americans for one week.
- fund Social Security retirement benefits for one day for over 6.75 million
Americans.
- pay for an increase of $3.34 per hour in the wages of every minimum
wage worker in the country.

So on a global spending scale, just how much money goes where?

GLOBAL PRIORITY $U.S. BILLIONS
Cosmetics in the United States: $8 billion
Ice cream in Europe: $11 billion
Perfumes in Europe and the United States: $12 billion
Pet foods in Europe and the United States: $17 billion
Business entertainment in Japan: $35 billion
Cigarettes in Europe: $50 billion
Alcoholic drinks in Europe: $105 billion
Narcotics drugs in the world: $400 billion
WORLD MILITARY SPENDING: $780 billion
And compare that to what was estimated access to basic social
services in all as additional costs to achieve universal developing
countries:
Basic education for all: $6 billion
Water and sanitation for all: $9 billion
Reproductive health for all women: $12 billion
Basic health and nutrition: $13 billion

...all information above comes from a lecture given by economist
Dr. Nancy Farmer, to properly cite my source. GREAT professor.

Well anyway, I just thought that should share that. Makes you think, huh? Well, I hope it does anyway.
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This makes me want to get off my lazy butt and do something for the world. ~B