What the US could have done with a trillon dollars

[go on then]

*apologies for the absence of fake boobs and remarks about 'getting her pumped - *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source:

http://edition. cnn.com/2008/ SHOWBIZ/books/ 10/27/ways. to.spend. trillion. dolla

rs.ap/index. html

 

Writer imagines other ways to spend war's $1 trillion

 

* Story Highlights

* Rob Simpson decided to put the dollars spent on Iraq War into

perspective

* Book called "What We Could Have Done With the Money"

* Simpson's alternative spending choices reflect his curiosity and wit

* Calculates $1 trillion could pave the U.S. interstate highway system

with gold

 

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.

Rob Simpson created a Web site that lets you go virtual shopping with a $1

trillion credit card.

 

 

"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."

[polwarthjambo]

i thought mr simpson gave the trillion dollar bill to fidel castro?! something along the lines of "Mr Burns - I think you can trust the president of Cuba"