Connecticut Town-Level Cost of the War in Iraq Flyers

by: wayne

Tue Jan 16, 2007 at 20:56:20 PM EST

In my town, our annual school budget is $55 million and our share of the cost of the war in Iraq is $87 million  (about 1.5 times the school budget).

We all know that not everybody wants to think about the war in terms of human suffering.  Many have grown spiritually numb to any number of dead "enemies."  My hope is that this financial accounting is just another perspective that can be used to crack the wall of apathy in the world out there.  Perhaps it will motivate some people to do "one more thing" to stop the madness.  Perhaps it can help shake another person out of complacency and complicity.

http://www.hopeoutlo...

The bottom of each flyer shows the calculation including the key census data used to perform the allocations (described below the fold).

It is my hope that these will be distributed around the state.  With an earlier version (when the cost was much lower), I stood outside the polling place for our town budget referendum and handed out a few hundred copies.

I decided to update them for the meeting with Congressmen Larsen, Courtney and Murphy at the State Capitol on January 13th.

These estimates are roughly based on the NPP methodology. NPP has a more sophisticated allocation methodology than simply using census data for "town median household income", "number of households in town" to estimate "total town income" so that a fraction of state total income can be calculated.  While NPP was willing to provide specific town level costs, they did not have the resources to provide a complete breakdown for all the towns, in all the states, that I wanted.  After reviewing the differences between their estimates for the selected cities and towns that they published, and the estimates from the simplified approach, I determined that they were close enough to use. 

Additionally, I could explain, in two sentences, EXACTLY how the numbers were calculated which was really disarming to people who scoffed at these "outrageous" estimates.

I use my 30 second spiel to explain where the numbers come from (I can do it without tripping over my tongue):

"Congress has authorized spending directly for the War in Iraq that is estimated to reach $378 Billion by March.  Because Connecticut pays about 2.5 percent of all the Federal Tax Revenues, Connecticut's share of the cost is $9.2 Billion.  This is then divided among all towns using town level median household income as the allocator.  For example ______[Simsbury's] median household income is _____ [just under one percent] of the states's total so _____ [Simbury's] share is ____ [just under one percent] of the $9.2 Billion or ____ [$87] million."

There are many squishy parts of any estimate like this, but, this is credible and convincing enough to satisfy just about everybody I have talked to. (Note: the real big "squishy" is that the money is borrowed.)

Now:  Download a flyer for your town ... make copies ... rehearse the 30 second spiel ...  go forth and talk about one aspect of the cost of the War in Iraq.