What would 700 billion dollars purchase?

I can’t say for sure what 700 billion dollars would purchase, but here are some suggestions.

High speed rail

I suspect ALL the following would fit in a 700 billion budget pretty easily:

• Seattle to San Diego
• Portland (Maine) to Miami
• LA to NYC
• Chicago to Miami (For those not having ever lived in the midwest/southeast, this is a tremendously important corridor).
• Houston to Minneapolis
• Solar to power all the infrastructure for these rail lines other the actual trains.

Solar suggestion

Or perhaps this: solarize all federal, state and municipal buildings, including schools at all grades and public community colleges and universities.

Public works

Are such public works pork barrel politics? Certainly. But it’s tasty pork that adds “inches to our waistline” metaphorically speaking. And there is something for everyone here. Except maybe Idaho, but they have Demi Moore, so it all balances out.

Fantastic post

From Chris Floyd, The Lie of Market:

Money to build and generously equip thousands and thousands of new schools, with well-paid, exquisitely trained teachers, small teacher-pupil ratios, a full range of enriching and inspiring programs.

Money to revitalize the nation’s crumbling inner cities, making them safe and vibrant places for businesses and families and communities to grow.

Money to provide decent, affordable and accessible health care to every citizen, to provide dignity and comfort to the elderly, and protection and humane treatment for the mentally ill.

Money to provide affordable higher education to everyone who wanted it and could qualify for it. Money to help establish and sustain local businesses and family farms, centered in and on the local community, driven by the needs and knowledge of the people in the area, and not by the dictates of distant corporations.

Money to strengthen crumbling infrastructure, to repair bridges, shore up levies, maintain roads and electric grids and sewage systems.

Money for affordable, workable public transport systems, for the pursuit of alternative sources of energy, for sustainable, sensible development, for environmental restoration.

Money to support free inquiry in science, technology, health and other areas — research unfettered from the war machine and the drive for corporate profit, and instead devoted to the betterment of human life.

Money to support culture, learning, continuing education, libraries, theater, music and the endless manifestations of the human quest to gain more meaning, more understanding, more enlightenment, a deeper, spiritually richer life.
The money for all of this — and much, much more — was there, all along. When they said we couldn’t have these things, they were lying — or else allowing themselves to be profitably duped by the high priests of the market cult. When they wanted a trillion dollars — or three trillion dollars — to wage a war of aggression in Iraq, they found it. Now, when they want trillions of dollars to save the speculators, fraudsters and profiteers of greed in the global market, they suddenly have it.

Who then can believe that these governments could not have found the money for good schools, health care, and all the rest, that they could not have enhanced the well-being and livelihood of millions of ordinary citizens, and helped create a more just and equitable and stable world — if they had wanted to?

This is one of the main facts that ordinary citizens around the world should take away from this crisis: the money to maintain, secure and improve the lives of their families and communities was always there — but their governments, and their political parties, made a deliberate, unforced choice not to use it for the common good. Instead, they subjugated the well-being of the world to the dictates of an extremist cult. A cult of greed and privilege, that preached iron discipline to the poor and the middle-class, but released the rich and powerful from all restrictions, and all responsibility for their actions.

The extract above is from the middle a fantastic post given from the link above. Definitely worth reading!

My take on it is that federal meddling actually got us into this mess, and that more federal meddling will simply make it worse. However, reality (whatever that is) often matters less than perception, and the public’s perception (mine included) is that what the government now it doing is no more than public assistance to the wealthy. Solving a debt problem with more debt postpones the inevitable day of reckoning.

There is one sure-fire way to “fix” this economy: fix your own economy. Refuse to borrow money for anything other than extremely valid reasons and extremely low risk. Wanna boat? Buy it in cash. New kitchen? Cash. In a well-regulated economy (i.e., the market has control rather political manipulation), credit is priced to risk.

You’re in charge!

What would you spend 700 billion dollars on? Bankers? Bacon? Let’s hear it.