For the price of the Iraq War, we could've bought the world's cinnamon harvest for the next ten thousand years.
135,000 metric tons of cinnamon were harvested in 2005. At 2001 prices, this much cinnamon was valued at $235 million. Adjusting for inflation into 2008 dollars, buying this much cinnamon for ten thousand years would cost $2.90 trillion, or $100 billion less than Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' estimate of $3 trillion for the total cost of the Iraq War.
