According to some estimates, the War in Iraq will cost $3 Trillion — money that could be spent better elsewhere. Here’s your chance — the $3 Trillion Shopping Spree gives people the chance to try to blow through $3 Trillion. Some of the alternatives to Iraq are though provoking — I was able to cure 17 Deadly Diseases and Buy Mosquito Nets for Everyone in Africa. Others are silly — I was also able to buy my own secret island base and a private 747.
One of things that surprised me is how hard it is to spend $3 Trillion. I pooped out at $2,999,836,227,804.90. That last Trillion was hard to get through!
How would you spend 3 Trillion Dollars? Universal Health Care? Fund Amtrak? Fight AIDS? Buy more bags of Gummi Bears than you could ever hope to eat in a lifetime?
You got around to using my “Dumb Stuff” tag! GREAT!
I’d buy beer and porn.
I could probably fund Green Card application process fees for all the undocumented immigrants in the US with $3 trillion… and maybe employ all the meat industry workers in industries I view as ethically preferable, too. Considering the numbers of undocumented workers in the meat industry, this would be a double-benefit for them.
But, can even $3 trillion convince Congress to stop seeing undocumented immigration as a phenomenon completely disconnected to the US and US citizens’ involvement in Latin America? Methinks that’s something that requires a bit more than money.
The problem with government spending is that we see “spending” as an expense. We see the government spending money and figure they want to save money so they should stop spending.
But here’s the thing……..the only way government makes money is by spending it.
If your job was to spend money, say, and each dollar you spent you could keep a dime, you’d spend a lot of money, wouldn’t you?
Now let’s say you bought things like video games. Cars. Beach front homes. You’d probably use them right?
The government needs to make money. So they spend it. That’s how they make it. Then they buy things. Sometimes they buy food. Sometimes they buy weapons. Sometimes they buy Formeldehyde laced FEMA trailers that kill the occupants. Whatever they buy they need to use that way the product is used and they can spend more to make more money.
In the case of this endless war they need to use the various weapons we’ve stockpiled over the last 50 years. There is no “cost” to them. Every dollar spent is a profit.
3 Trillion isn’t hard to spend. Lobster & Prime Rib for EVERYONE for 20 years. Problem solved.
How about rice and beans and tortillas for everyone for 50 years? ;)
Considering that most of that 3 trillion is money we don’t even have but are borrowing from China and our future to throw this ridiculous war…imagining spending it on positive things is fun but we could just “not” spend the 3 trillion dollars we don’t have and that would be good too.
Ew, good point, Katie. How long till China decides it wants all its money back?
“How about rice and beans and tortillas for everyone for 50 years? ;)”
Oh, Sky, we could. But the way I figure it is that within those 20 years of Lobster and Prime Rib we’d probably start another 3 trillion dollar war then we could just not start that war and have another 20 years of Lobster & Prime Rib.
We could all eat Lobster and Prime Rib forever.