Estimated cost of the War

$323,000,000,000

Your share

$1,374.85

Based on U.S. adult population of 234,934,412. 

What you could have bought with your share:

1 Magnavox 32" Widescreen LCD HDTV

2 pairs of Manolo Blahnik Patent Leather Pumps

3 trips to Vegas (air and hotel), staying at Mandalay Bay
From most cities in the U.S. Price per person, based on double occupancy.

4 Nikon Coolpix S3 6 megapixel digital cameras 

5 iPod Nanos (4GB)

One movie ticket a week for four years 

475 gallons of gas @ $2.89/gallon 
(If you drive a Toyota Prius, this would cover your gas bill for more than two years.)

1,322 Junior Bacon Cheesburgers

1,858 longneck bottles of Bud or Bud Light

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the war costs $200 million a day. Your share is 85 cents. That's $25.54 a month or $310.73 a year.

$323 billion would buy every share of:

Halliburton 8x over

GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler (combined) 4x over 

Time Warner 4x over

 Google 2x over

 Walmart, Target, Sears and JC Penney (combined)

But it would be $54 billion shy of ExxonMobil, which is worth $377 billion
ExxonMobil was worth $200 billion on March 19, 2003, the day before the invasion of Iraq.

 What else could we do with $323 billion?

Hire 577,648 teachers for 12 years
Based on average teacher salary of $46,597.

Give every student enrolled in a four year college a $33,423 scholarship
Based on 9,664,000 students enrolled in a four year college.

Buy health insurance for all 45 million uninsured Americans for almost two years
Based on average insurance cost of $3,695.00 per person. If, unlike with the Medicare prescription drug bill, we were able to leverage our market power, the cost would be much less.

 Buy 20 brand new stadiums for all 30 teams in Major League Baseball - 600 stadiums total
Based on $522 million estimated cost of the new stadium for the Minnesota Twins.

Build 1,448 bridges to nowhere
Based on $223 million estimated cost of a bridge connecting Ketchikan, Alaska, (population 7,685) to an island with 50 people.

Hire 30,153,099 people to work for one year at the federal minimum wage
If the minimum wage were increased to $7.25, we could hire 21,409,098 people for one year.   

Pay the salary of Congress until the year 5660
This does not take into account the automatic salary increase Congress gives itself each year.
 
Buy every member of Congress three meals a day, 365 days a year until the year 13035
Based on the Congressional gift limit of $50. If we only fed Congress on the 97 days they were in session, they'd be well fed until the year 43508.

Bribe every member of Congress 6,037 times
Based on reported bribe of $100,000 for Congressman William Jefferson. 
This does not account for the fact that the cost of a Congressman is variable. For example, Congressman Duke Cunninham had a "bribe menu" charging $140,000 for a $16 million government contract. That's an 11,400% ROI. Wall Street investors eat your hear out!

Not spend it and stop mortgaging our children's and grandchildren's futures
The national debt was $8,350,234,805,954.23 on 6/27/06. More than 8.3 trillion  dollars. Your share of that is $35,542.83, enough for you to buy a new BMW.