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Gatsby
Joined: 09 Feb 2007
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 Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 9:48 pm Post subject: What is 1,000,000,000,000 dollars? |
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Sad. Incredibly sad.
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Writer imagines other ways to spend war's $1 trillion
KNOXVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- When the Sunday morning political pundits began talking last year about the tab for the war in Iraq hitting $1 trillion, Rob Simpson sprang from his sofa in indignation.
"Why aren't people outraged about this? Why aren't we hearing about it?" Simpson said. And then it came to him: "Nobody knows what a trillion dollars is."
The amount -- $1,000,000,000,000 -- was just too big to comprehend.
So Simpson, 51, decided to embark "on an unusual but intriguing research project" to put the dollars and cents of the war into perspective. He hired some assistants and spent 12 months immersed in economic data and crunching numbers.
The result: a slim but heavily annotated paperback released, "What We Could Have Done With the Money: 50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We've Spent on Iraq."
Simpson is no geopolitical, macro-economic, inside-the-Beltway expert. He's an armchair analyst and creative director for an advertising agency, a former radio announcer and music critic in Ontario and a one-time voiceover actor.
His alternative spending choices reflect his curiosity and wit.
He calculates $1 trillion could pave the entire U.S. interstate highway system with gold -- 23.5-karat gold leaf. It could buy every person on the planet an iPod. It could give every high school student in the United States a free college education. It could pay off every American's credit card. It could buy a Buick for every senior citizen still driving in the United States.
"As I started exploring, I was really taken aback by some of the things that can be done, both the absurd and the practical," Simpson said.
America could double the 663,000 cops on the beat for 32 years. It could buy 16.6 million Habitat for Humanity houses, enough for 43 million Americans.
Now imagine investing that $1 trillion in the stock market -- perhaps a riskier proposition today than when Simpson finished the book -- to make it grow and last longer. He used an accepted long-term return on investment of 9 percent annually, with compounding interest.
The investment approach could pay for 1.9 million additional teachers for America's classrooms, retrain 4 million workers a year or lay a foundation for paying Social Security benefits in 65 years to every child born in the United States, beginning today.
It's too recent to make Simpson's list, but that $1 trillion could also have paid for the Bush administration's financial bailout plan, with $300 billion to spare. It might not be enough, however, to pay for the war in Iraq. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz has recently upped his estimate of the war's cost to $3 trillion.
Simpson created a Web site companion to his book that lets you go virtual shopping with a $1 trillion credit card. Choices range from buying sports franchises to theme parks, from helping disabled veterans to polar bears.
Click on Air Force One, the president's $325 million airplane. The program asks: "Quantity?"
"At one point we couldn't find anybody who actually stuck with it long enough to spend $1 trillion," Simpson said. "It will wear you out." |
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/10/27/ways.to.spend.trillion.dollars.ap/index.html
Wasn't Bush supposed to be "The Education President"? |
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sharkey
Joined: 12 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 9:55 pm Post subject: Re: What is 1,000,000,000,000 dollars? |
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| Gatsby wrote: |
Sad. Incredibly sad.
| Quote: |
Writer imagines other ways to spend war's $1 trillion
KNOXVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- When the Sunday morning political pundits began talking last year about the tab for the war in Iraq hitting $1 trillion, Rob Simpson sprang from his sofa in indignation.
"Why aren't people outraged about this? Why aren't we hearing about it?" Simpson said. And then it came to him: "Nobody knows what a trillion dollars is."
The amount -- $1,000,000,000,000 -- was just too big to comprehend.
So Simpson, 51, decided to embark "on an unusual but intriguing research project" to put the dollars and cents of the war into perspective. He hired some assistants and spent 12 months immersed in economic data and crunching numbers.
The result: a slim but heavily annotated paperback released, "What We Could Have Done With the Money: 50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We've Spent on Iraq."
Simpson is no geopolitical, macro-economic, inside-the-Beltway expert. He's an armchair analyst and creative director for an advertising agency, a former radio announcer and music critic in Ontario and a one-time voiceover actor.
His alternative spending choices reflect his curiosity and wit.
He calculates $1 trillion could pave the entire U.S. interstate highway system with gold -- 23.5-karat gold leaf. It could buy every person on the planet an iPod. It could give every high school student in the United States a free college education. It could pay off every American's credit card. It could buy a Buick for every senior citizen still driving in the United States.
"As I started exploring, I was really taken aback by some of the things that can be done, both the absurd and the practical," Simpson said.
America could double the 663,000 cops on the beat for 32 years. It could buy 16.6 million Habitat for Humanity houses, enough for 43 million Americans.
Now imagine investing that $1 trillion in the stock market -- perhaps a riskier proposition today than when Simpson finished the book -- to make it grow and last longer. He used an accepted long-term return on investment of 9 percent annually, with compounding interest.
The investment approach could pay for 1.9 million additional teachers for America's classrooms, retrain 4 million workers a year or lay a foundation for paying Social Security benefits in 65 years to every child born in the United States, beginning today.
It's too recent to make Simpson's list, but that $1 trillion could also have paid for the Bush administration's financial bailout plan, with $300 billion to spare. It might not be enough, however, to pay for the war in Iraq. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz has recently upped his estimate of the war's cost to $3 trillion.
Simpson created a Web site companion to his book that lets you go virtual shopping with a $1 trillion credit card. Choices range from buying sports franchises to theme parks, from helping disabled veterans to polar bears.
Click on Air Force One, the president's $325 million airplane. The program asks: "Quantity?"
"At one point we couldn't find anybody who actually stuck with it long enough to spend $1 trillion," Simpson said. "It will wear you out." |
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/10/27/ways.to.spend.trillion.dollars.ap/index.html
Wasn't Bush supposed to be "The Education President"? |
bush doesnt want anyone in the usa smart, because smart people begin to ask questions, not follow him regardless of his lies etc |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 12:51 am Post subject: |
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9-11 cost the US how many trillions of dollars?
By the way it is wrong to mention that none of the 9-11 hijackers nor virtually anyone in Al Qaada was / is from Afghanistan.
Somethings ought not be said. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 2:41 am Post subject: |
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Here's a question: where did that trillion dollars go? Did it simply disappear into a vacuum? Or did it get spent?
When money gets spent, it doesn't evaporate into the nether; it circulates around in the economy, acting as driver for growth, which is a very good thing.
I wonder why the writers of the article made no attempt to account for this most basic of concepts. I'd be far more interested if they'd done real research to determine where the money actually went (ie. used to pay companies, contractors, soldiers/staff etc.) than their silly, imaginary applications of a "trillion dollar credit card" used to pave the streets with gold... |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 2:57 am Post subject: |
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| visitorq wrote: |
| When money gets spent, it doesn't evaporate into the nether |
That would be 'ether', I believe. But point taken. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 3:07 am Post subject: |
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^ yeah 'ether' sounds better...
(must have played too much warcraft back in the day, and got "twisting nether" on the brain).. |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 3:19 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
9-11 cost the US how many trillions of dollars?
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How much exactly?
I remember the IRA blowing up half of england and trillions of dollars were never mentioned. I don't see how one terrorist attack would cost trillions of dollars. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 3:56 am Post subject: |
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| JMO wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
9-11 cost the US how many trillions of dollars?
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How much exactly?
I remember the IRA blowing up half of england and trillions of dollars were never mentioned. I don't see how one terrorist attack would cost trillions of dollars. |
WTC
Stockmarket Crash
Made a recession worse
Security measures
Enemies emboldened.
A lot of people seem think that suicide bombs can level the balance of power. |
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Captain Corea
Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 4:51 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| JMO wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
9-11 cost the US how many trillions of dollars?
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How much exactly?
I remember the IRA blowing up half of england and trillions of dollars were never mentioned. I don't see how one terrorist attack would cost trillions of dollars. |
WTC
Stockmarket Crash
Made a recession worse
Security measures
Enemies emboldened.
A lot of people seem think that suicide bombs can level the balance of power. |
You talk about the lack of specifics in the article, yet give no figures yourself.
odd |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 4:54 am Post subject: |
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| Captain Corea wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| JMO wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
9-11 cost the US how many trillions of dollars?
|
How much exactly?
I remember the IRA blowing up half of england and trillions of dollars were never mentioned. I don't see how one terrorist attack would cost trillions of dollars. |
WTC
Stockmarket Crash
Made a recession worse
Security measures
Enemies emboldened.
A lot of people seem think that suicide bombs can level the balance of power. |
You talk about the lack of specifics in the article, yet give no figures yourself.
odd |
didn't talk about the article.
I would guess the stock market fell 20 % within a week of 9-11.
It eventually lost around 40% all the way down to 7500 from 11,000
the other stuff is hard to calculate and probably can't be . |
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Gatsby
Joined: 09 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 5:09 am Post subject: |
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When you spend a trillion dollars, much of it on weapons that go BOOM!, that's about as close as you can come to the money disappearing into a vacuum.
What money isn't vaporized, much of it is being spent in Iraq, which should be great for the Iraqi economy, theoretically. And Afghanistan.
Couldn't we have bought Iraq and Afghanistan for a trillion dollars?
And they still aren't our friends.
Sounds like money down a rat hole to me. |
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canuckistan
Mod Team
Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Location: Training future GS competitors.....
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 6:19 am Post subject: |
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Wouldn't it have been great to spend the money on a program to move the country towards more alternative energy and less dependence on oil.
It's patriotic! |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 7:30 am Post subject: |
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| canuckistan wrote: |
Wouldn't it have been great to spend the money on a program to move the country towards more alternative energy and less dependence on oil.
It's patriotic! |
Sure , 100% true but if the US isn't going to do that then the US better get the enemy.
This is true for more than one reason. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 8:20 am Post subject: |
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| Gatsby wrote: |
When you spend a trillion dollars, much of it on weapons that go BOOM!, that's about as close as you can come to the money disappearing into a vacuum.
What money isn't vaporized, much of it is being spent in Iraq, which should be great for the Iraqi economy, theoretically. And Afghanistan.
Couldn't we have bought Iraq and Afghanistan for a trillion dollars?
And they still aren't our friends.
Sounds like money down a rat hole to me. |
Well that's mainly what I'd like to know (and what I think it would've been more useful for the article to have focused on): how much of that "trillion dollars" was actually just plain wasted. I suppose things like really expensive missiles and ammunition that can only be used once, destroyed equipment, and fuel for all the war machines might constitute a waste, but surely a trillion dollars has not been spent just on raw materials etc. that vanish after being consumed once. No, most of the money is spent on companies that manufacture the weapons, vehicles, supplies etc. and on the manpower to sustain the war.
So what impact does all that government expenditure have on the (US) economy? You might argue that spending the money on war is not the most efficient way to boost the economy, but I think any money spent is probably quite beneficial at the end of the day (speaking economically that is, not taking moral objections to the war into consideration here).
In other words, I don't think much of that trillion dollars "vanished", but is rather circulating around the economy in such ways that cannot be easily perceived by you or me. Large corporations that signed expensive contracts with the gov't have received a whole lot of that money, which then gets invested elsewhere, plus all the people who work for those companies get paychecks, as do the the soldiers who their money back home, which then gets spent and benefits the economy. Etc. etc. |
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