So, depending on how you slice the numbers, the U.S. war effort in Iraq will cost U.S. tax payers around one trillion dollars or more. ONE TRILLION DOLLARS! Now, I’m not the first person to think of this, but I just can’t stop thinking about it: What else could we have done with that amount of money??

The poor U.S. administration has given us one feeble answer to the question of how to spend $1,000,000,000,000. You can find a few more ideas in What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy by David Leonhardt, NY Times, 17 Jan 2007. But I think you and I can do even better! I challenge you to look around you and get greedy. Give our leadership a few more options to consider when it goes to blow its wad in the future!

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Here it goes! One trillion dollars.

To post your suggested uses of $1,000,000,000,000, please post a comment to this entry.

Let me start with the obvious. With 300 million people in the US, we could just flat out write a check for $3,333 to every man woman and child alive in the country today. But wait, that's not a wise use of money! Let's invest that trillion at an average of 10% return and make yearly payouts without squandering the principle. We could write a check for $333 every year to every US citizen.
Money is nice and all, but neither of these options excites me too much. I want to hire some consultants to come up with better ideas. At a salary of $100,000 for a year's worth of ideas, I could hire 10 million people. That's a lot of ideas.
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