Buy the state of WV, give the 3 million people there enough money to live happily ever after and turn the entire state into a huge wildlife reserve :)
Just kidding, on a serious note this much money would be the end of a lot of the US's problems. Could build countless high quality homeless shelters that also acted as career centers to train people to get back on track in life. Hurt at first, but with that many people no longer needing public care and eventually working and bringing in tax money in the end it would cancel itself out money wise.
Fix the public school system! Society is doomed if each generation become less educated and more lazy.
Setup a 10billion dollar college fund for underprivileged kids. Accepted to MIT, but you or your family can't afford it? Well worth the investment.
Invest in alternative energy research, besides maybe that kid who went to MIT will figure it out for you. :)
So many things could be done... it's just mind blowing.
posted by jshriver at 11:04 A.M. EST on Thu May 24, 2007 #
The first thing I would do, is buy a space-ship and send George W. Bush & Carty Finkbeiner to planet Mars.
posted by WalterAnthony at 11:59 A.M. EST on Thu May 24, 2007 #
There's a fatal flaw in your plan, J. There's no amount of money that you could give a set of Americans that could impel them to "live happily ever after". Whatever the amount is, they can just turn around use as a down-payment on an overpriced asset like a house, mansion, estate, ranch, etc. We all know these types of people; no matter how much they have, they want MORE. Everything they collect becomes folded into one of their payment plans ... not only impoverishing their cash flow, but producing yet another debt on their balance sheets.
$456 billion doesn't go very far with people with unsatisfiable needs.
Now, about that $456 billion: it isn't money. It's DEBT. DEBT is not wealth. It was borrowed (by the borrow-and-spend Republicans) and should not have existed in the budget in the first place. It doesn't matter what it could have bought "otherwise", since it should never have been drawn upon in the first place.
To illustrate what that $456 billion really is, pump in into a mortgage calculator for a 30-yr payoff. It'll turn into at least $1 trillion. THAT will be real money, since it will take taxpayer money to pay it off.
Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex, and Jefferson warned us about monied corporations. That $1 trillion will flow into their pockets from yours. Why aren't you a slave, again?
posted by GuestZero at 12:10 P.M. EST on Thu May 24, 2007 #
War isn't an investment. To spend billion for hydroelectric power plants (like Canada) makes sense because it increases public wealth and and ays itself back.
To hire people to blow up and rebuild another country when they could be producing goods and services all of us want and need at home is at best inflationary and at worst highly immoral.
On the plus side the oil companies got potentially $27 trillion dollars in oil reserves from Iraq. $27kkk
And the war profiteer industries have been booming. And wages have stayed the same and job security has floundered and the market received tax cuts so bond holders can prop up stock prices temporarily....
So war is probably more about class war than security. Millions dead and trillions of wealth pissed away can't be wrong.
posted by charlatan at 12:36 P.M. EST on Thu May 24, 2007 #
Sad yet well said GZ
posted by jshriver at 01:39 P.M. EST on Thu May 24, 2007 #
I can think of no better way of spending that kind of dough than invading and occupying a country that posed no direct threat to our national interests prior to the invasion.
Or I guess we could have started a big bonfire with the money. Same result.
posted by Ace_Face at 02:50 P.M. EST on Thu May 24, 2007 #
There's no amount of money that you could give a set of Americans that could impel them to "live happily ever after". Whatever the amount is, they can just turn around use as a down-payment on an overpriced asset like a house, mansion, estate, ranch, etc.
Heck! I'd take the $456 billion, I have a feeling it could fill the void in my heart.
posted by SensorG at 03:23 P.M. EST on Thu May 24, 2007 #
It's all Bush's fault! :^D
posted by Darkseid at 07:31 P.M. EST on Thu May 24, 2007 #
It's all Bush's fault! :^D
That goes with out saying.
I think me getting a $10,000 bathroom remodel would have been a lot better use of the money.
posted by SensorG at 08:50 P.M. EST on Thu May 24, 2007 #
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