For $100 Billion you can Universal Health Care for all people in the U.S. without it.
For $35 Billion you can get universal preschool. Half-days for 3-year-olds and full days for 4-year-olds.
For $10 Billion you can carry out all the security recommendations issued by the 9/11 commission.
All these costs are annual. We're not saying this is how we should spend the money, but it does give you an idea of what a large amount we're talking about.
Putting the annual cost of war into perspective [NYT]
(Photo: donbuciak )
@Copperplum: If you're talking about recent campaigns, FM&FM execs have actually donated more to Republicans (but only by like $2-3 million less). But to your point, the greasing of both sides has been fairly consistent.
]]>What angers me the most, though, is that we repeatedly "don't have the money" to provide health care for our citizens...but we have the money for THIS?
]]>Thanks.
]]>What's your definition of poor?
I no longer consider myself poor, as I have moved up in my career, but I remember being above the poverty line, yet still struggling to make ends meet, and doing without healthcare. Emergency expenses, such as car repairs - because poor people sometimes have to drive shitty cars - left me in a hole that took years to get out of. And I payed taxes.
So stop parroting Rush Limbaugh or whoever you're channeling. Generalizations like these just prove you're intellectually lazy.
]]>Put 28 million Prius on the road in place of gas guzzlers"@nacoran: You'd be hard pressed to find 28 million people who want to drive one of those inefficient pieces of crap. That's right, I said inefficient.
]]>YUM!
]]>Put 28 million Prius on the road in place of gas guzzlers
or
Put $10,000 worth of solar cells on the roof of 70 million homes
or
Could replace 28 billion incandescent bulbs with CFL's at a generous $5 a bulb. That's nearly 100 bulbs a person.
]]>Reagan?
]]>politicians that don't support universal health care do not support small business. bottom line, no joke, reality check.
I suppose fo 700 billion they could spare about 3 grand so I can get my teeth fixed?
]]>Well this is reaping the fruit of Bill Buckley. Everything in the New Deal is bad, government should stay out of business. Too bad shit for brains is not alive to see this.
]]>@veronykah: Because the working class and the middle class absorb tax increases just fine!
I know that for my two person household (one being a child), I could absorb a tax increase that equals 12% of my income just fine.
]]>Or, for about $1 trillion dollars, we could just pay off all of the bad mortgages. Switch them over to federal loans to individuals, not banks.
That way, no one loses their homes AND they get a fair interest rate from the government.
The government gets its money back, with interest, over the next 10-30 years.
The banks get their capital right away, they can become solvent again, and start looking for other ways to screw the taxpayer out of money.
Everyone wins. Nobody loses. The economy is saved.
All hail Lincoln Paradox!
]]>100 billion gives healthcare to 15-20% of the population.
100,000,000,000 = 20%
1 trillion:
1,000,000,000,000 = 200%?
So for 1/3 the cost of the war, we could all have healthcare?
]]>@OrlandoMoose: And yet... if the government did nothing, everyone would accuse them of standing by and watching the financial system collapse and not protecting the American people. I don't envy the politicians on this one... no matter what they do everyone is going to complain about it. Which probably explains why the folks who rely on elections to get a paycheck (congress) are all pretty non-commital on this thing, but most of the folks who don't (Bernanke, Paulson, Bush in a few more months) are taking more of a specific stand.
]]>And Bush promised us Mars. He promised!
]]>Yes, just toss the Socialism grenade to try and end the discussion. Unfettered free markets have gotten us the S&L crisis, Enron and now this giant mess.
For the past 8 years this administration has told us that any social program was "too expensive" while at the same time adding 4 Trillion dollars to the national debt (probably 5T by the time they're out of office). What has it gotten us? If we had spent the money on infrastructure our roads and bridges would be in good repair, if we spent it on health care, we'd be healthier, if we spent it on a bunch of giant solar farms and a national direct current transmission system we'd at least have added a bunch of clean power to the grid and reduced pollution.
By the time this administration is out the door, they will have overspent by 5 trillion dollars and we will have literally nothing to show for it. If there is so much money available for a completely unnecessary war and money available to bail out financiers who took absolutely ridiculous risks, then there ought to be money for a national health care program. Remove the health insurance companies from the picture with their 25% overhead and teams of lawyers, employees, forms and policies that do nothing but figure out how to deny coverage, and it will probably be cheaper overall than the system we have now.
]]>Or, you could give the money back to the people from whom it was seized in the first place.
]]>Or use that money, something with the HUD, and rebuild those neighborhoods that were forclosed. Revive New Deal policies everyone?
]]>"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power." Franklin D. Roosevelt April 29, 1938
]]>Or, maybe, build a manned space station that orbits Mars. That would be cool.
]]>It sure will! Social health care, social education, social services for all people - not welfare for megacorporations and subsidized private losses!
Yay socialism, the money of the people being used to help the people, not just line the pockets of the already wealthy and powerful!
]]>@balthisar: Only $2300?! I don't think I've ever even SEEN $2300.
]]>I'll get right on that.
]]>It's amazing that that Corporate Welfare is just honky dory. Corporate Socialism is just peachy keen. 700 billion to save these companies from bad decisions is just shiny.
What happened to the beloved market principles? Well, simple, as long as they were getting theirs, the market worked. Now that they're in danger of losing theirs, the market "needs help."
Socialize the risk, privatize the profit, it's the Fascist way. Fascists pretend to be doing things for "the people" or "the country." In reality, fascists only worry about themselves.
/yawn
The sucking and blowing of these morons is astounding.
]]>700 Billion Dollars can buy you 700000 $10,000 whores for a night... Bam!
]]>Oh wait
]]>Yep, $700 billion will buy a lot of socialism.
]]>Short answer: Anything I want, pretty much.
You suppose someone can buy the US for 700 billion yet? Or are we still worth a bit more? Once the markets slide a little further into oblivion, I expect some other country will snap us poor americans up just to rub our faces in it. Good grief.
Someone please tell me why with that 700 billion I can't have health care? Please explain it to my pathetic miserable puppy eyes anmd see how wretched you feel afterwards, effing polititans. "Find a job with health benefits" people say. Oh sure, that's fine- except that every one wants to hire people at PT and not FT around here so they don't have to pay them out *sigh*
]]>It seems to me if you used the money for all those things, the economy might do better anyways. A healthier, better educated, safer future sure couldn't hurt.
]]>