$1 trillion, $2 trillion ...

Common sense and science both tell us that, at some point, quantity turns into quality. Add heat to water and for a while nothing much happens. But eventually it starts to disappear—the splishy, splashy liquid is evaporating, becoming a gas. Go the other way and cool it down and, sure enough, at a very definite point the free-running liquid turns into hard, brittle ice.

When it comes to social phenomena, the point of dramatic change may be harder to predict, but it happens, sooner or later. Take something like the amount of money that the Bush administration’s war and occupation of Iraq is costing.

It’s a staggering amount—no one can pinpoint it for sure. Estimates run from $1 trillion to $2 trillion. The higher figure comes from a Nobel laureate in economics, Joseph Stiglitz.

You have trouble imagining a trillion dollars? Join the club. Even a billionaire would have difficulty visualizing how much goods and services could be bought with a trillion dollars, and something tells us that if you’re reading this editorial, you’re not a billionaire. (If you are, you’re probably trying to figure out how to sue us—or worse.)

This is a very fluid sum, because the war and occupation are still going on and, incredibly, the government seems to be preparing to widen the war to other countries in the region. So $1 trillion or $2 trillion may soon have to be revised upwards.

The war is now almost four years old, so it has been draining the Treasury at the rate of around $1 BILLION A DAY—more or less, depending on which estimate you choose. By comparison, the National Cancer Institute’s budget is just $6 billion a year.

New Orleans and its levees could be completely rebuilt better and safer for about what the war costs in a month.

You get the point. We could have universal health care, good schools, subsidized housing, and everything else that is needed to lift the entire population out of poverty if this money, which comes from the taxes of working people, were spent on human needs instead of on a doomed attempt to deliver world empire to the super-rich of this country.

How much bigger does this massive theft of the wealth created by the working class have to become before the political climate passes the threshold of rebellion, before quantity turns into quality?

Actually, that’s what the more realistic of the billionaires are asking themselves. How much time have they got left before they’ll have one hell of a fight on their hands—not just in Baghdad but right here, in their soft underbelly? When does disgust, disillusionment and anguish among the people turn into a commitment to organize for profound and irreversible social change? The money and blood keep piling up, piling up.