AFL-CIO Weblog | Could You Live on $7 a Day?

The United States spends $2.5 million a day on the war in Iraq while 48 million adults and some 12 million dependent children each live on $7 a day, according to an analysis by the Times. It’s not just that Bush has the worst job growth record of any president in the past 40 years. (Just today the U.S. Department of Labor reported 357,000 newly laid-off workers filed jobless claims, a rise of 34,000 from the previous week.) It’s also that the jobs being created do not pay family-supporting wages nor do they provide the type of health and pension support that has sustained our traditionally vibrant middle class.

Why should war only be a last resort? Because as president Eisenhower once said:

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

The American people must wise up and find out what’s more important to them. Perpetual war or their society?

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