On the Surplus Side
Humor / Politics - It’s easy to understand why Iraq has accumulated a massive amount of money from oil export revenues -- an estimated 79.3 billion dollars -- but is spending so little of it. Its hesitancy may have something to do with paying KBR vendors a half million dollars to fix a Mr. Coffee machine.
Seventy nine billion dollars may seem like a lot but not when you’ve been paying American contractors a hundred dollars for bite-size Snickers bars. Americans grip their hearts before looking at how much the plumber charged for snaking their toilet. Can you imagine the estimate for stopping raw sewerage that’s been flowing down your street the past six years?
I have no idea what a plumber in Baghdad charges these days, but if it’s half as much as what Haliburton plumbers have been charging the United States taxpayers, it’s no wonder Iraqis are willing to jiggle their toilet handles and hope for the best.
Iraq will eventually tire of periodic electrical service but only when it can find a reasonably-priced electrician to do the work -- preferably someone who doesn’t electrocute his customers.
Americans can afford only so many four-dollar cups of Starbucks coffee in these hard economic times. Is it any wonder Iraq is in no hurry to pay for a thousand-dollar Blackwater smoke detector?
