This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 14th, 2013. I'm Caleb Brown.

How much is another year in Afghanistan worth to you?

Is it worth your mortgage interest deduction?

John Basil Utley, associate publisher of the American Conservatives,

says it's a good way to think about the price of war and global militarism, we spoke today.

It's precisely that it's very difficult to see the costs of war juxtaposed with other costs. You know we all know war is expensive but seldom

do you see the you understand what it's costing us in real money. I say a million, we can more or less understand a

million. We multiply our earnings, our salary by so many months and we get up to a million.

A billion, nobody, a few people understand.

A million is a thousand, a billion is a thousand million.

That's already beyond comprehension and a trillion is a thousand billion. But I like to say,

when instead of billions, I like to say, thousand million,

it makes it a little more comprehensive.

Anyway, the Politico newspaper and website

put out a piece called Tax Loupoles alone can't solve the fiscal deficit.

And in it they put a rare figure, what does it cost the government for these different loopholes?

One of the biggest is these different loopholes.

One of the biggest is the home mortgage deduction.

That's a hundred billion dollars a year.

All the home mortgage interest deductions, the interest, that all Americans get that benefit that, of course the government

keeps talking, taking it away, is roughly $100 billion a year.

Well that's what it costs us to do the war in

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