Website listing economic tradeoffs for tax cuts, Iraq war, others

[seasat]

I ran across this cool website. They are splitting the costs of these items based on Federal revenues from each state. It is a neat way to put things into terms people can relate to. (LINK)

Here's what they have for the cost of the war in Iraq and what my state could have used it for:

Taxpayers in Florida will pay $17.5 billion for the cost of war in Iraq. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:

3,770,814 People with Health Care or
323,161 Elementary School Teachers or
2,347,227 Head Start Places for Children or
13,987,146 Children with Health Care or
189,850 Affordable Housing Units or
2,880 New Elementary Schools or
6,285,663 Scholarships for University Students or
303,845 Music and Arts Teachers or
417,692 Public Safety Officers or
22,372,629 Homes with Renewable Electricity or
314,263 Port Container Inspectors

[whistle]

1. How was the $17.5 billion figure derived? Is this a special levy on

....Florida tax payers? Or is it just our share of the cost from the taxes we already pay? Most Florida billionaires pay no taxes on their earnings, only working Floridians pay and pay and pay and pay....

[seasat]

2. Here's what they say:

For the following programs, we calculated each state's share of taxes paid into federal funds revenues (based on IRS data). This includes individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, excise, gift and estate taxes. Each state's share of taxes was then multiplied by the total amount of the given item. Please note that the state shares were last updated with new IRS data in August 2006, so you may find that your state's share has changed from a previous visit to NPP's trade-offs page.

[Warpy]

3. Won't work for me

Either it doesn't like Firefox or it doesn't think NM is a state.

[Sammy Pepys]

4. A valuable insight into the costs of certain things...

...but stuff like this is typically overstated. 22 million homes with renewable electricity? There aren't even that many people in Florida. And what are we talking about when we say "renewable electricty?" Everyone gets a solar panel or a turbine?

And in an occupational sense, the numbers they deduce are based on one time costs, like one years salary.

What we should be focusing is not how many units of X we can purchase with Y, but the actual results of better funding for education or health care. That we can build a couple thousand more schools doesn't say anything for the quality of education received at those schools. That we can higher 300,000 more port inspectors says nothing as to how secure that will actually make our ports.