A Stealth Bomber with a side of Cure For Cancer
(Warning: my accountant girlfriend has just told me that this blog subject is, like many of my blog subjects, "boring")
So I was reading the Globe & Mail online today, since it's one of the only ways to get Canadian news here in Massachusetts, and I came across an article describing the government's plan to spend $15 billion on new military equipment. Actually it wasn't that hard to find the article since it was plastered on the front page (front memory block?) of the site, since this issue will no doubt be a contentious one in Canada. I personally think that this is a good idea, since our military is driving/flying/rowing around in antiquated vehicles that are clearly not up to the tasks that we're asking them to perform. And yes, we could save the money by not participating in any NATO missions and only tasking them with snow removal in Toronto when the city goes into "fuckup mode" (thanks Heather!), but what happens when their donkey-drawn battle trolleys get bogged down while trying to tow the snow into Lake Ontario?
Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that $15 billion is a LOT of money. The point is also that $15 billion is a TINY amount of money compared to the US defence budget. All of which got me to thinking...if the United States needed a smaller military, what else could be accomplished? I'm not going to do some crazy calculation and say "what if the United States had NO military", just smaller, like maybe 20% smaller. OK...the total US defence budget is $426 billion dollars (NOT including funding for the war in Iraq). A 20% decrease in precision-guided shock-and-aweing would free up approximately $85 billion, leaving the US with $341 billion to buy huge rocks to drop on Middle Eastern theocracies from space or whatever. With that money, here is what could be accomplished:
1. Buy six times the amount of military equipment that Canada is planning to purchase and give it to Greenland, Canada's sworn enemy in the north, just to get back at us for exporting Celine Dion to Las Vegas.
2. Hahaha...okay that first one was a joke. But now I'll be serious. Give every man, woman, and child in the country $300, which is enough to equip every person with a brand new Xbox 360!
3. Okay okay...for real. Quadruple the budget of the National Insitutes of Health. The NIH funds the vast majority of biomedical research groups in the US, and if someone ever finds a cure for cancer or diabetes or influenza or Republicanism, it will be because of an NIH grant.
4. Increase funding for Pell grants (federal scholarships that the US gives out to students who are too poor to afford university on their own, which is pretty much everyone) by a factor of 7. Can you imagine the impact on society if 7 times more people obtained postsecondary education here??? This is a bit simplified since there aren't enough spaces in the colleges for this many people, but you could probably split the money between grants to students and grants to schools to increase the number of graduates by a factor of 2-3.
5. Provide fully subsidized health care to about 42 million people. 42...MILLION...people. That's based on what my health insurance costs are (unsubsidized) in Massachusetts, which is one of the most expensive states to be insured in. It would probably be something like 50 million people if you averaged the cost over all 50 states.
6. Create 21 gigawatts of solar power generation, which could provide as much power as approximately 20 nuclear reactors. Sure you'd have to pave New Mexico with solar panels, but there's nothing there anyway.
There are tons more things that you could do with $85 billion besides liberating countries to death...anybody out there have any more ideas?
So I was reading the Globe & Mail online today, since it's one of the only ways to get Canadian news here in Massachusetts, and I came across an article describing the government's plan to spend $15 billion on new military equipment. Actually it wasn't that hard to find the article since it was plastered on the front page (front memory block?) of the site, since this issue will no doubt be a contentious one in Canada. I personally think that this is a good idea, since our military is driving/flying/rowing around in antiquated vehicles that are clearly not up to the tasks that we're asking them to perform. And yes, we could save the money by not participating in any NATO missions and only tasking them with snow removal in Toronto when the city goes into "fuckup mode" (thanks Heather!), but what happens when their donkey-drawn battle trolleys get bogged down while trying to tow the snow into Lake Ontario?
Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that $15 billion is a LOT of money. The point is also that $15 billion is a TINY amount of money compared to the US defence budget. All of which got me to thinking...if the United States needed a smaller military, what else could be accomplished? I'm not going to do some crazy calculation and say "what if the United States had NO military", just smaller, like maybe 20% smaller. OK...the total US defence budget is $426 billion dollars (NOT including funding for the war in Iraq). A 20% decrease in precision-guided shock-and-aweing would free up approximately $85 billion, leaving the US with $341 billion to buy huge rocks to drop on Middle Eastern theocracies from space or whatever. With that money, here is what could be accomplished:
1. Buy six times the amount of military equipment that Canada is planning to purchase and give it to Greenland, Canada's sworn enemy in the north, just to get back at us for exporting Celine Dion to Las Vegas.
2. Hahaha...okay that first one was a joke. But now I'll be serious. Give every man, woman, and child in the country $300, which is enough to equip every person with a brand new Xbox 360!
3. Okay okay...for real. Quadruple the budget of the National Insitutes of Health. The NIH funds the vast majority of biomedical research groups in the US, and if someone ever finds a cure for cancer or diabetes or influenza or Republicanism, it will be because of an NIH grant.
4. Increase funding for Pell grants (federal scholarships that the US gives out to students who are too poor to afford university on their own, which is pretty much everyone) by a factor of 7. Can you imagine the impact on society if 7 times more people obtained postsecondary education here??? This is a bit simplified since there aren't enough spaces in the colleges for this many people, but you could probably split the money between grants to students and grants to schools to increase the number of graduates by a factor of 2-3.
5. Provide fully subsidized health care to about 42 million people. 42...MILLION...people. That's based on what my health insurance costs are (unsubsidized) in Massachusetts, which is one of the most expensive states to be insured in. It would probably be something like 50 million people if you averaged the cost over all 50 states.
6. Create 21 gigawatts of solar power generation, which could provide as much power as approximately 20 nuclear reactors. Sure you'd have to pave New Mexico with solar panels, but there's nothing there anyway.
There are tons more things that you could do with $85 billion besides liberating countries to death...anybody out there have any more ideas?
posted by Dexter at
5:48 p.m.
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6 comments
