America just fired 3,000 teachers at Libya
The average salary of an American teacher is a bit over $40,000 a year. To make the math simple, I'm going to use a nice round figure of $50,000 (source payscale.com ... click here )
The average unit cost of a Tomahawk cruise missile is $1,400,000. (source, Federation of American Scientists ... http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/bgm-109.htm). Again, I'm going to use $1,500,000 for easy math.
The cost of each cruise missile could pay the salaries of 30 teachers for a year.
The United States just fired 112 of these missiles at Libya. For easy math, I'll use the round number of 100.
For the cost of just those missiles, the US could have paid the salaries of 3,000 teachers for the next year.
And, that's only a fraction of what the US military spend on that one day in and around Libya. That's just the cost of the missiles themselves. That doesn't pay for the costs to have the ships in the Med to fire the missiles. It doesn't pay for the expensive jets which cost nearly $20,000 an hour to fly. (source click here) These jets fly in pairs, and thus for every hour that pair is in the air, we could afford to pay another teacher's salary for this year. And, this cost doesn't include the other 'smart bombs' that we undoubtedly dropped that all cost more than the salary of a teacher for a year.
Here's the really sad part. Absolutely nothing that's happened in Libya this weekend has improved the security or wealth or prospects of American citizens. Not in the slightest. We weren't fighting to defend our shores from invading hordes. We were killing terrorists before they could kill us. This did nothing good for the American people.
But, when we lay off teachers, that's a direct blow at the future wealth and security of Americans. All across America, teachers are being laid off. We are told we don't have the money to pay their salaries.
America just fired 3,000 teachers at Libya.
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