Sunday, March 23, 2008

Other ways to spend our money

From Kristof's piece in the NY Times:
"A Congressional study by the Joint Economic Committee found that the sums spent on the Iraq war each day could enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start or give Pell Grants to 153,000 students to attend college. Or if we’re sure we want to invest in security, then a day’s Iraq spending would finance another 11,000 border patrol agents or 9,000 police officers."
Each day. EACH DAY, people. What are we doing?

3 comments:

Dr. A said...

And probably just a few hours to fund all the top scored NIH grants...... wanna find the cure for alzheimers? cancer? neonatal heart defects? take your pick. Just call off a couple hours of the war, say an extended lunch break..... Ahhhhh. one can dream, right?

B. E. Busby said...

WTF? It costs 3 Pell grants to place one wiggler into Head Start? To quote the Southpark kids, "dude, that's seriously fscked up right here."

Darren said...

Yeah, that seem odd about the pell grant-to-head start ratio, but according to this http://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/finaid/grants/pellawardschedule.html the maximum pell grant is only $2,155. And if it's on the internet, it must be true!