Antiwar site lets you spend $3 trillion your way

A clever way to illustrate the opportunity cost of the war.

Published April 18, 2008 8:05PM (EDT)

Three trillion dollars is a lot of cash. You know that, but it's more than you think: For the last three hours I've tried to spend $3 trillion and I barely cracked a trillion. Can you do better?

My playground was 3Trillion.org, an antiwar Web site set up by Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films.

In his new book, the economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the Iraq war will cost, in total, $3 trillion. The Greenwald site aims to illustrate the opportunity cost of the war -- other things we might have done with the money.

The site is populated with items from Amazon and other shopping sites -- ordinary items, things like the "Full House" box set and Oprah books -- but users can also add their own big-ticket things.

These are fascinating -- many are well-meaning, though more than a few betray the same kind of money-will-make-it-happen wrongheaded idealism that got us into Iraq in the first place (for instance, even spending $500 billion will not "replace all media with guaranteed truth only" -- that's just crazy talk.)

Here's my shopping list -- my total was $1,262,141,869,322.10. Yours?

F/A-22 Raptor
1 purchased for $100,000,000.00 each
Virgin Mary Sandwich
1 purchased for $28,000.00 each
Parmigiano Reggiano Aged 18 months - 2lb wedge
1 purchased for $24.00 each
Make a Hollywood Movie
1 purchased for $106,600,000.00 each
Full House - The Complete Series Collection
1 purchased for $99.00 each
Lost - The Complete First Season
1 purchased for $37.00 each
The West Wing - The Complete Series Collection
1 purchased for $179.00 each
Grand Theft Auto IV
1 purchased for $56.00 each
Dinner for 4 at The French Laundry
1 purchased for $800.00 each
Broadband To Every U.S. Home
1 purchased for $100,000,000,000.00 each
MacBook Airs for everyone in the U.S.
1 purchased for $546,649,000,000.00 each
"True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society"
1 purchased for $17.13 each
Send Your Mom a Letter from Abraham Lincoln
1 purchased for $3,400,000.00 each
The Hope Diamond
1 purchased for $250,000,000.00 each
Hanes Classics Men's 6 pack cushion crew Sock, White, 6-12
1 purchased for $7.99 each
BLUE ICE Glitter Barbell Tongue Ring
1 purchased for $1.00 each
Colonix - Internal Cleansing Program (Liver, Kidney, Colon, And Parasite Cleanse) - FREE UPGRADE TO EXPEDITED SHIPPING
1 purchased for $86.00 each
Buy the Beatles' Back Catalog
2 purchased for $1,488,820,000.00 each
A Vacation
1 purchased for $20,000.00 each
New York Yankees
1 purchased for $1,027,000,000.00 each
Go On Vacation to Space!
1 purchased for $20,000,000.00 each
Achieve the Millennium Development Goals
1 purchased for $60,000,000,000.00 each
Mooning Garden Gnome
1 purchased for $14.98 each
Food, Shelter & Vet Care for Unwanted Pets
1 purchased for $15,000,000,000.00 each
Secret Island Fortress
1 purchased for $15,000,000.00 each
Harvard University
1 purchased for $35,000,000,000.00 each
Housing for America's homeless
1 purchased for $74,000,000,000.00 each
Achieve Universal Literacy
1 purchased for $5,000,000,000.00 each
End Third-World Debt
1 purchased for $422,000,000,000.00 each

By Farhad Manjoo

Farhad Manjoo is a Salon staff writer and the author of True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society.

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