In his column today in the NY Times, Nicholas Kristof calculated that our war in Iran is costing about $1.3M per day. He points out that this is a conservative estimate, since it does not take into account the higher cost of gasoline and other items, or costs that will continue beyond the war itself, like long term healthcare for maimed and injured soldiers.
If you multiply this out, the total comes to about $683 billion per year. Considering that about 154 million Americans voted for president in 2024, that is essentially an average poll tax for the year of about $4,300 per voter.
This war doesn’t look like it’s going to end anytime soon, so the total poll tax you are paying if you voted for this president, on average, will come out to about $13,000 over the next 3 years. That is, of course before you take into consideration the increased costs for groceries, gasoline, healthcare and tariffed imports like furniture and other items needed by you and your family.
But there is a silver lining. You can take comfort in the fact that those other people, the approximately 50% of voters who didn’t vote for him, also need to pay an average of $13,000 more over the next 3 years.
If the entire cost of this war had been paid only by the people who actually voted for him, you would have needed to pay an average of upwards of $26,000 for the privilege of voting for this president.
Isn’t democracy great?