As we head into a recession, it’s a good time to consider How the Iraq war’s $2 trillion cost to U.S. could have been spent.
That’s roughly 400 million high-end digital SLRs with fancy lenses. Wow.
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on January 22, 2008 at 11:02 pm tvp wrote:
I love playing with numbers like this. For instance, even if we decided to be totally selfish and help no one else in the world, we could have cut a check for over $7,000 to every man, woman, and child in this country. (Which is also the bill due for each and every one of us, if divided evenly, since we’re the ones paying for it.)
Crazy numbers are everywhere. Recently I sat down and calculated how much Shaun Alexander, the running back for the Seahawks, gets paid per yard he gains.\
It’s $10,000 per yard!
I guess if we could get him to run for about 200 million yards, he could pay for it.
tvp
on January 22, 2008 at 11:38 pm Doug wrote:
So it would have been cheaper to have Shaun Alexander run to the sun and back (186 million miles) than to invade Iraq. What if.
on January 23, 2008 at 1:06 am tvp wrote:
Actually, since Shaun gets paid per yard (not per mile) it would cost 3.7 quadrillion dollars to get him to do such a thing. If all you have is a paltry 2 trillion dollars, the farthest you could get him to run would be halfway to the moon, or, say, five times around the Earth.
I mean, this guy is *expensive*. You don’t hire a guy like this to run to the sun.
tvp
on January 23, 2008 at 9:17 am Doug wrote:
Oops. Yards, miles, whatever.
on January 23, 2008 at 3:47 pm Scott B wrote:
I can’t say it matters much. I will keep on his bandwagon 1 more year. But, I am begining to feel like he is being payed too much per inch now.
on January 23, 2008 at 7:07 pm tvp wrote:
Just what Doug wanted on his blog: a football discussion!
I wanted to let Alexander go after our Superbowl season. Not because I didn’t like him, but just that I felt his value was as high as it would ever get and that he’d peaked in his career. He was right at the age where running backs start to decline and I didn’t think he’d ever reach that level again. It’s something I’ve hated to be right about, but I was right about it.
tvp
on January 24, 2008 at 5:47 pm Doug wrote:
Running back. That’s what Walter Payton does, right? (I’ve not followed the NFL for a while.)
on January 24, 2008 at 6:48 pm Lynn wrote:
Do you guys calculate all these numbers in your head?