Things we could have bought instead for half a trillion bucks?

[Rex_Goodheart]

How about a mag-lev train from SF to NY?

[nichomachus]

1. Wouldn't work

It would have to go through Kansas -- and they don't believe in magnetism.

[Rex_Goodheart]

5. LOL

[valerief]

8. Yeah, they only believe in sinful animal magnetism. nt

[madinmaryland]

11. Hey, Rick Santorum lives in Virginia now!!

[Selatius]

2. With 500 billion, that's enough to fund Amtrak at current levels for roughly, oh, 5 CENTURIES. Or...

we could invest that 500 billion in constructing bullet trains connecting the east and west coasts and as a high-speed alternative to the interstate, bus fleets (maybe we should look into diesel-electric hybrid buses?) to connect suburban areas with metro areas, and probably have enough money left over to enforce higher fuel efficiency standards as well as investments in alternative energy sources.

[valerief]

3. Another Dubai. nt

[SoonerPride]

4. A brain transplant for George W Bush?

Maybe two?

[leftyclimber]

6. A payoff for my student loans?

There might be enough left over for a cup of coffee after, too. :shrug:

[TCJ70]

7. A perpetual motion machine?

I dunno...that amount of money is unfathomable to me.

[Greyhound]

9. Hmm, let's see. We could pay for food, water, health care, reproductive care,

and basic education, for the entire world (thus eliminating the perceived need for our war machine) for 5 years. According to the UN study referenced in John Perkin's book.

[DrDan]

10. well - the cost will eventually hit a trillion or two or three

Here is an LTTE I sent to the Daytona New Journal a couple of months ago. This is based on a trillion-dollar war. I think the loss to the U.S. is staggering when considering what we are pissing away with this war.

***********************************************************************************************************************

Conventional wisdom puts the cost of the Iraq war at one trillion dollars. (One Nobel-winning economist suggests the cost could actually reach 2 trillion dollars.) That figure, however, is based on direct costs. When the treatment and long-term care for the thousands of serious injuries, and the costs that are not being shared (after all, with 1,000 documented lies of this administration, what's a couple more to hide some of the less-well received expenditures) included, the costs could easily surpass that estimate.

But the true cost is what we are missing by not having that money to spend on improvements here at home - the lost opportunities.

For example - education. A teacher averages around $40,000 annually throughout their career. A 30-year teaching career then would cost around $1.2 million in today's dollars. The conservative cost of this war, could provide an additional 830,000 teachers for 30 years - or nearly 17,000 teaching careers for each state!

But where would they teach? A new high school is being built in Orange County. It's construction costs are estimated to be $80 million. The Iraq war could provide 12,500 such schools across the country.

Or, the cost of this war could provide 50 new schools in each of the 50 states each with 270 teachers for 30 years! Staggering

Bridges. The American Society for Civil Engineers has determined that there are 70,000 bridges across the U.S. that could use some repair. The estimated cost for repairs to these bridges is $188 Billion dollars - or about $2.7 million per bridge. This necessary expenditure is less than 20% of the cost of the war! In addition to fixing these bridges, an additional 675,000 teachers could be hired for 30 years.

Hospitals. A new hospital being built in Mountain View, California has a construction cost of $294 million. This war could have provided 3,400 such hospitals across the U.S.

The sad part of this debacle is that not only are our children and grandchildren the ones that are being deprived of the above, they are also the ones that will be paying the cost of the war.

[ladjf]

12. We could have been up to about 15% alternate energy and

almost there to breaking the oil monopoly. Furthermore, thousands of American troops and maybe as many as a million Iraqis would still be alive. The world would still be looking up to us for leadership.

But what did we get for that money?