In the style of Harper's Index, if with so much less elegance...
Number of deaths in the USA due to fundamentalist Islamic terrorists in 9/2001: 2,996
Estimated number of those that were US citizens: 2,669
Number of deaths in the USA due to traffic accidents in the same month: 3,303
Number of deaths in the USA due to fundamentalist Islamic terrorists between 9/12/2001 and 12/31/2008: 0
Number of deaths in the USA due to traffic accidents in approximately the same period: 303,841
Total approved, as of 12/2009, for the three military operations initiated to combat terrorism in response to 9/11 (excluding funds for CIA, FBI, TSA, Homeland Security, etc.): $1,086,000,000,000
Estimated budget for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the same period: $6,520,000,000
The NHTSAs budget, expressed as a percent of the amount allocated for these military operations: 00.
Estimate, in 2008, for the final total cost of the Iraq war alone: $3,000,000,000,000
Amount allocated to the military per terrorism related US citizen death in the USA since 9/11/2001: $406,893,967.78
Amount allocated to the NHTSA per traffic related death: $21,458.59
Amount allocated to the military per terrorism related US citizen death in the USA since 9/12/2001: Undefined
Percentage of causes of death in the USA that kill more people than terrorism: 100
Percentage of causes of death in the USA that receive more public money for prevention than terrorism: 0
Percent change in gross federal debt between 2001 and 2010: 232.97
Percentage of gross federal debt in 2001 that would have been eliminated by 1.086 trillion dollars: 18.8
Amount each US household would receive given 1.086 trillion dollars evenly distributed: $9443.48
Rank of defense, excluding expenditure on active military operations, among all categories of federal spending: 1
Percentage of federal spending in 2009 that went to defense: 23
Percentage of federal income in the same year that came from individual income tax: 43
Percentage that came from social security/social insurance tax: 42
Percentage that came from corporate income tax: 7
Sources:
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHTSA
Global Terrorism Database, with specific query used
The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11, by the Congressional Research Service (pdf)
The three trillion dollar war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
Projections of the Number of Households and Families in the United States: 1995 to 2010, from the US department of Commerce (pdf)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
1 comment:
This is good. Thanks for compiling all this information.
I went to the NHTSA site, wondering what they did with their budget, and was struck speechless by this quote:
"U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today released updated 2009 fatality and injury data showing that highway deaths fell to 33,808 for the year, the lowest number since 1950."
Then I read your latest posts tagged "design", stopping at the one about reforming cars so they didn't rely on human drivers. I wonder how much progress we'd have made by now if we'd invested the money in such a project that we spent on the wars and counter-terrorism instead.
Thanks for making me think about things I wouldn't have thought about otherwise, and for the density of information that isn't boring or incomprehensible.
I went to the Bioneers lecture on Ciudad Juarez this evening. "Thinking the Future While the Present is Murdered Before Your Eyes." What a title, but it describes so many things going on in the world. Sobering.
Chuck Bowden, one of the speakers, said something to the effect that Juarez was the future--lack of resources (especially water), collapse of order, etc. But he also said anyone who couldn't find hope had never fallen in love or looked at the stars.
Those are the sorts of things I've been drawing on for hope lately, but I know full well it's possible to think life isn't worth living despite it all. I didn't know that until last fall, and it took me a long time to even start recovering from that.
So, very thought-provoking evening. I want to apologize for the pointlessness of the content of this comment, but I figure posting one is better than lurking, to avoid the production of information asymmetries.
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