Rob Simpson, author of What We Could Have Done With The Money, has asked what the US could have had for that trillion dollars if it hadn’t spent it on war. Some of his answers are sad (pay every Iraqi 3X their average income to stay peaceful), some are tragic (rebuild and protect New Orleans for only 213 billion), others are comic. But they all put into perspective that was lost wasn’t just lives, it was opportunity. Money used to kill people, drive up the price of oil, violate human rights and destroy the US’s international reputation could have bought a heck of a lot. And Simpson has been conservative, he puts the cost at a trillion, but when you take into account deferred costs (like looking after Vets who are amputees) economist Joseph Stiglitz put the cost of the Iraq war at 2 trillion.
And Stiglitz doesn’t add in certain other costs. For example, military hardware is obsolesced very quickly by warfare, because enemies get to see how it works and what its weakness is. The Abrams was once thought invincible but today foreign governments and guerillas alike know how to defeat them. A generation of military hardware will have to be replaced if the US wants to keep its edge.
It’s the lives not lived, the paths not followed that make us weep the most. Rob’s book invites us to imagine some very different worlds, not just worlds without the war, but worlds with what the Iraq war cost us, such as:
- Pay off every American’s credit card debt. And hey, still have a couple hundred billion left for a night on the town.
- Pay off those Bush tax cuts. Nope. But you could pay, er, pay the interest on their cost for about 10 years.
- A solar power build out big enough to generate enough energy for two-thirds of all American homes.
- $10,000 subsidy on hybrid cars, leading to 40% of the US auto fleet being hybrid, and reducing gas use by 56 billion gallons a year.
- Give every single American a full $600 makeover. Because aren’t you all just stressed out dahllling?
- The World Sings As One! Stage 40,000 3 day music festivals each with 125 acts on 9 stages.
- Send 5 years worth of high school students to university, with fully paid tuition.
- Clean up and revitalize 667 rivers.
- Mass Transit! Create 6,667 miles of monorail or subway systems (about New York to Tokyo, or 60 miles in each major city).
- Pave every highway with 23.5-Karat gold leaf!
As Rob writes at the end of his book, the US could have done amazing things with that money. Instead it chose not to, to pour the money into a hole in the desert. And in a democracy that means that everyone failed, not just the politicians. This is a book that drives that point home, in plain figures and cold facts. It is, I think, the perfect gift for the Republican friend who’s beginning to have a few doubts, because it’s non-partisan, even-handed, and it’s just the facts, ma’am.
And hey, the roads really could have been paved with gold!
Related posts:
- FDL Book Salon Welcomes Dahr Jamail, The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan
- FDL Book Salon Welcomes Barry Ritholtz – Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy
- FDL Book Salon Welcomes Maggie Mahar, Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much
- FDL Book Salon Welcomes Senator Byron Dorgan, Reckless!: How Debt, Deregulation and Black Money Nearly Bankrupted America
- FDL Book Salon Welcomes Michael Huttner and Jason Salzman, 50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America
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Mr. Simpson, welcome to the salon. :)
Thanks so much – a pleasure to be here.
Since I didn’t put it in the review, let me ask here. What are your personal top 3 things to do with the money out of the fifty in the book?
Rob, Welcome to the Lake.
Ian, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.
Welcome to Firedoglake! Glad to have you with us.
Turns out a trillion dollars is a lot of money….
Hi Ian, Hi Mr.Simpson.
Clever idea for a book, hope it catches on — somehow we need to break through to the general population.
What kind of feedback have you been getting, what interest from the MSM?
Will your promotion tour take you to network television, like the Today Show or Oprah?
Free college educations for every American child currently in high school is probably number one … for what it would do for our global competitiveness, and for the way it could affect young people in poor areas or inner cities … to give them a sense of hope and belief in their futures.
Next up would probably be rebuilding and protecting New Orleans. The state of things – this long after Katrina – is a national disgrace and tragedy.
And third would actually be a combination of the alternative energy thoughts. Hybrids, ethanol, solar energy – there’s so much we could be doing to ease our dependance on foreign oil, and to improve the environment at the same time.
I think the rapid transit one did it for me, but there were so many good ideas there that it just makes me sad.
And hey, piles of free music festivals would be cool too :)
Would love to get some national TV exposure, of course. None planned yet. I’m thinking a Daily Show or Colbert audience might respond well.
A columnist from the Chicago Trib jumped on the book, and there was a pretty lively discussion in his online postings.
Beyond that, not much yet – but it’s early. The book’s only been out for a couple of weeks.
That, in a sense, was the impetus for the book. The thought that none of us can really appreciate what a trillion dollars. It’s just a number – and an unfathomable one – until you give it some kind of context. When I started ranting about how someone needed to make me people see how much money that really is, my wife responded, “What do you SOMEONE should?”
And so, I was off.
Oh, man.
I bet this kind of thing would have had a chance in the (not) Gore Administration(except for Repub obstructionism). i’m still dumbfounded at the course the US took.
I hope you can get past the choir, though. Your book’s a great way to open some ordinary eyes, and also the eyes of those who will not see.
One part of the book I found interesting was that no matter how expensive the war on Iraq was, it was actually less expensive than the Bush tax cuts. I should have known that, and I guess I did, but somehow it had never really sunk in before. As you note, we’re going to pay the price for them, for the war, and all our other deficit spending in the future. We spent the money, the bills will come due (like buyin one of those “pay nothing for a year!” deals.
What amazes me is the way the right wing pats itself on the back for allegedly having a greater sense of how economies work, and being responsible about money (vs. the ‘tax and spend’ accusations). And to see the Republicans throw away this amount of money – it’s infuriating! Imagine if Al Gore had introduced a trillion dollars in spending – the howls of protest we’d have heard!
Rob thank you for writing this and putting the dollars into some perspective. It needs to be thrown into the face of anyone that starts saying something that helps people is “unaffordable.”
Yep, Rob – and please throw in free college for every single person who fought over there..between the two groups, it could do great things for our economy.
Is a Trillion more than a Brazillion?
Rob, welcome.
Ian, thank you for hosting today’s Book Salon.
Very few of us have a clear picture of how much the tax cuts are really going to cost us all. The typical middle-income household in America got a tax cut of $1855 (2001 through 2006). Meanwhile that family’s share of the national debt grew by $8936. And who knows what that will ultimately cost, when you tack on year upon year of interest. Of course, if your income is measured in the millions, it works out a bit better for you.
Thanks for being here.
I remember reading a book about sociopathology. And in it, they said that the more outrageous the lie a sociopath told, the harder it was to perceive it to be so. Because having to fathom it was having to process the horror that someone could lie on such a grand scale… venture that far to peer into the “dark side”.
These numbers are so hard to fathom intellectually and emotionally in almost the same kind of context. And your perspective illuminates the loss on what could have been. Not only the horror that has gone on… but the opportunities that have been lost.
Reading about dealing with homelessness, fighting cancer, true greening of America and earnestly saving our planet, made me teary.
My Dad used to sing that song, “Sixteen tons, what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt.” About how you had to tell St. Pete you couldn’t afford to die, cuz you owed your soul to the company store.
Bush’s pre-presidency history with money is a nightmare. Seemed to have a tendency to bankruptcy as I recall.
Molly Ivins wanted us to have SUSTAINED outrage. Your book is helping with that consciousness raising.
Perhaps Blue America might want to consider hand-delivering 535 copies of it to the Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congress of the United States of America, without whose work this book never would have been possible.
Kind of a followup to the Rubber Stamp deliveries . . .
That’s shocking! And McCain is offering more tax cuts?
Hello. I do not understand the premise of your book. It’s not as if we had the money to spend — we borrowed it, and spent it off budget. So what is the point of discussing what it would have bought? Our society isn’t set up to borrow and spend that kind of money on anything but war.
I haven’t read your book, but I might if I understood the premise. Thanks.
Aaaarrgghh, don’t even get me started on the treatment of vets. This mad-hatter logic that we have to cut VA spending because we’ve spent so much on the war (and demand for VA services is up so much) — it’s crazy. BTW – I’ll throw in a plug here for Home For Our Troops – a great group that helps seriously injured and disabled veterans with new housing and/or modifications to their homes. Some projects are big, some are small (like say, keyless entry systems for vets who have suffered permanent hand injuries).
Make a note to drop by homesforourtroops.org
I’d love to get the book into the hands of politicians. Any thoughts on how to do that?
Ok, was it just me or did the lake just wig out and then pop back?
I got the weirdest hick-cup. Most of post with still in english and then over a couple lines it changed in code like stuff, with user names etc mixed in there?
I haven’t read it yet either, but the premise seems to be that if you’ve decided that it’s OK to borrow $1 Trillion for something, there are a lot of other things that might have been better ways in which to spend that money.
The notion of spending $1 trillion on a “solar power build out,” for instance, might have had many interesting and unforeseen delightful consequences . . . like not having to fight so many wars for oil and not adding to the temperature of the Earth, just for starters.
I have to come out and go back in to see new comments.
This book is good because it tells us what we could have done with the money. Also some things like hybrid cars would cut demand for oil which would cut the price and produce more savings.
Make it a Pop Up book with lots of cool pictures and Bush might pick it up:)
Governments borrow money all the time. I’m not lobbying for deficit spending here, but help me understand what makes it okay to borrow money for war, but not to invest in our future or help the less fortunate among us?
yeah, you have to refresh the page to see new comments, the new comment banner is “out of order” On Windows, hit the F5 key.
Oh, I know that, :), but this wasreally different.. I have been here for many of the other server issues, but have never seen that..
It wasn’t my computer, because my other tabs opened fine. My internet was fine, it was just weird….
Thanks, Elliot.
That works on Firefox, too, even if it’s hosted on Windows.
there purpose was not to “spend” the money, their purpose was to steal it.
and in the process, they had to “launder” that money through this REDICULOUS war, and that launderng is at a premium of incredible magnitude, they get A FRACTION of every dollar laundered intro their bank account, but that fraction is more then they had which therefore makes it a fine and dandy investment
plus most of the costs cannot even be counted, some of the lives lost would have had children who made discoveries that will now never be made, cures to problems, almost definately solutions that would help us combat global warming among other issues
and not only the life lost, the inttegrity of this nation, it’s ability to broker events on the international theater is now almost gone entirely
not to even mention the productivity of those lives lost and their family, and their friends
what has been lost by this war cannot even be measured
Let’s see, we could build at least ten more International Space Stations, and maybe funded a new shuttle program to build them all.
Here’s
A sick graph – Iraq war spending vs. spending on renewable energy
I think jackie posted this before.
They all have offices, and the offices all have staff members who greet visitors with warm smiles.
Step one: acquire 535 books. Unless an author and/or publisher donates the books, this means finding some $$$. (hint, hint)
Step two: set up deliveries. Best would be a deliveries by constituents, but that can get hard for senators/representatives whose states/districts are farther away. Next best would be to get some committed folks in and around DC to agree to descend on the capital on the same day, making deliveries on behalf of others: “I’m from DC, but my uncle lives in the Senator’s state and he’d like you to pass this book along to the Senator.”
Step three: set up publicity. Don’t just drop the books off — get some bloggers to post about the deliveries, including who was polite and who gave you the brush off. Pictures and video would be nice, too.
Step four: followup. Set up some phone calls to the offices “Hi, I stopped by last week and dropped off this book, and was wondering if the Senator/Rep and/or the staff had any reactions to it that they’d like to share?” Perhaps a senator or two will wave it around on C-SPAN2.
Now if you could just find a politically-oriented blog that’s in the business of making change (not simply talking about change) to help with this, you’d be all set . . .
*g*
Mr Simpson,
Welcome to the Lake.
did you examine what we could have done on Healthcare with a Trillion ? Or Autism or Alzheimer’s Research and what of alternative energy R & D ? just thinking in terms of election year issues . . .
btw – American Friends Service Committee (those wacky Quakers) have been publishing some pieces/videos on these lost opportunities for some time now – wonderin out loud if your publicist folks may want to hook up for a synergistic Youtube.
To achieve positive goals we have to have the capacity to VISUALIZE them. The planning and entitlement stage. Because of such sustained horror, we all seem to be getting a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, we are losing our capacity to embrace hope… to dream for ourselves as individuals, our younger generation, our nation, our earth.
This insane spending is like being on an ocean liner that can’t make a hairpin turn. And Congress is still turning over funding to Bush and his shenanigans. And Congress is seemingly taking bribes to forsake our constitution.
Upset that KBR construction caused almost 300 electrical fires in 6 months causing 13 deaths of our soldiers in their living quarters. Will this be held accountable? I bet KBR has collected more than a tidy sum from war profiteering.
You touch on an important point when you talk about America’s ability to influence the international theater. On September 11th, the world rallied around America and seemed to recognize for a moment that the USA really are the ‘good guys’, and that the anti-Americanism that has always been around to one degree or another was largely unfair.
America had a window of opportunity to assume the moral high ground, and rally the support of nations and people around the world – to fight terrorism, to promote democracy, to pursue all sorts of agendas.
Instead, all that good will and that magic moment was squandered, and we end up with a world that’s more suspicious/resentful of America than ever.
That’s very sad.
Gee Peterr, sounds like you saw the same movie I did.
“The Attack of the Rubber Stamps” was it?
;~P
Oh, and I’ll be in for at least the cost of one book, special delivery to one Mark Pryor.
This is an interesting site for calculating the cost of the war in terms of what the money could have purchased.
They could have made that graph easier to see by using a logarithmic scale. ;-)
There are some chapters that look at health care issues and alternative energy.
On the healthcare front, it’s intriguing to think of what might have been achieved with a trillion dollars spent on medical research – especially since we’re entering an exciting period in medical research, developing biological answers that go beyond chemical solutions. Pretty breathtaking new possibilities on the horizon. Of course, some of those involve stem cells, which takes us off on another discussion altogether.
I remember gulping on that fateful day and praying, praying, praying to God and to Bush, “Please rise to this occasion. Please, please, please rise to the occasion. Please be the leader we need at this moment. Please, dear God, please let him rise to this occasion.”
It would surely cover a chicken in every single pot on the planet.
Hoping we can take some of the off topic and glitch related discussions to the previous thread out of respect for our author, thanks.
You might also like a couple of things on the book website (whatwecouldhavedonewiththemoney.com). It shows what the war has cost you as an individual to this point, and also calculates how much has been spent on the war since you arrived on the home page. It’s kind of mind-boggling to watch that dollar odometer spin.
OH, Wow, I am really sorry for OT :(
Welcome Rob..I was talking to my son earlier and we were talking about how much we have spent on wars and if that money had been realistically spent on education, Science, etc we as a race, could already be doing the whole Star Trek thing etc..It’s a shame really..
Here is a slide show that places the cost of war for one day to $720 million dollars and offers positive possibilities for that amount of money. Hard to wrap my mind around $720 million per day, let alone a trillion and more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnq6cD5jk1Q
Why yes, I do believe that was the movie — link right here.
The reviews were quite good:
“Adorable! . . . very cute.” – Looseheadprop
“Very funny!” – jere
“Wonderful. Wonderful. . . . Great job.” — zennurse
(There are more reviews at the link above.)
Perhaps the time has come for a sequel?
and, where did a lot of the money get ‘laundered’? Halliburton(of which, Dick Cheney is the largest single stock holder) and Blackwater.
I think that those who were in power and rubber-stamped this war should have to answer for it. It doesn’t seem that many of them were interested in being responsible stewards for our money (or our soldiers or our international standing). It’s easy to get up in the passions of the moment and play to the crowd, but leadership is supposed to be more than that, isn’t it?
Absolutely.
Thus a book like yours, that presents various alternative choices that they might have taken, lays that lack of stewardship and lack of leadership out there pretty clearly.
Have you gotten any interesting reactions to the book yet, from anyone in DC?
What I find so tragic, is not just the war… but 2004. I’m not American, and I was truly disheartened and disgusted after the 2004 election. Granted Kerry was a very imperfect candidate, especially to run against a war he had, well rubber stamped. But all I could think was “Americans know now about the torture, the lies, etc…” and they still voted for Bush. At the end of the day,that still disturbs me.
One of my American friends loves to quote Churchill “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing. After having done all the wrong things first.”
I’d be interested in hearing how others think we should have spent the money. I’ve got 50 alts in the book, but I’m sure there are countless others. Thoughts?
You could train enough congenital heart surgeons to save all the children in the world born with repairable heart defects. For one.
I still think we need to start by expropriating a ranch in Crawford. OK. Its not a trillion, but it’ll be a start.
I have not read the book so you may have used this but besides investing significantly in alternative/mass transit, I’d guess that $1 Trillion would go a long way towards complete re-build of beat-up sewer and highway infrastructure around the country including new bridges (railroad and highway both) as well as levees for the various rivers and strengthening dams and aon and on…
No – not sure how many of them have seen/read it, but my guess is that responses would consist largely of ‘duck and cover’. Of course, some will stand by the war and its funding ’til the end
I don’t think it mattered to most of us that Kerry had voted for the AUMF. What mattered was that he hadn’t yet admitted that doing so was a mistake, and that mistake needed to be corrected. He just promised to fight the war better than Bush would have. After the election he did all that, but by then it was too late.
And $1 trillion might also be a start on the clean-up costs for all the existing super-fund sites.
Nice idea — just don’t do it until his term is done — otherwise, he might end up spending more time in Washington, and who knows what damage he might do. Let him clear as much brush around the ranch as he wants between now and January.
Also, the enterprise value of Halliburton is about $50 billion. Add to that KBR Inc (3.3 bllion) and Blackwater (who knows). More expropriation to do….
Welcome Rob! And thank you, Ian.
We don’t have much right to the moral high ground any more, but we’ve got the moral low ground pwnd.
I’m all for recovering the money wasted, frauded, and abused.
Sad that all the good works America has done around the world can be erased from global consciousness with a single wave of a magic wand.
Kerry won the 2004 election. We didn’t vote Bush in for another 4 years. The research has proven it.
And we’re at it, why not nationalize a few spyin’ and immunized telcos too? :)
The KC Star had a piece on wind energy on its front page this morning, which included this little tidbit:
Yep — $1.3 trillion is enormous.
“burp!”
From what I found as I researched the book, we could get more electricity for less money if we pursued solar power rather than wind, but far be it from me to stand in the way of T. Boone Pickens. I think it’s really exciting to see an oil man of his stature and power getting behind alternative energy sources. God bless and God speed …
uh..it didn’t go into a hole in the desert. It went into the pockets of corrupt Iraqis; shareholders in our defense-industry companies; CEOs of oil and defense industry companies. In other words, this war really was nothing but a giant con-job on the 51% of the voting public who voted, mindlessly, for Bush and Cheney. They were conned. We sat and screamed bloody murder about it, but they didn’t want to hear it. They like their fantasies better.
Ever really have a real conversation with a Bush voter? They’re so out of touch with the most basic realities it’s a wonder they can function at all.
That’s well over 50 million American adults. If that doesn’t make you uneasy, nothing will.
Amen! I was floored when I first heard TBP’s ad, pushing wind power over oil.
When I picked myself up off the floor, however, I got to thinking. As a pastor myself, I wondered if TBP’s “conversion experience” was a sign of the apocalypse. What’s next — Rush Limbaugh donating the bulk of his new salary to support public radio?
Now Peterr, it should at least be something that is feasible. I somehow doubt that there is any possibility in this universe that Rush would do such a thing.
Well, we do have one of the architects of the Contract With America writing op-ed pieces in support of Obama now, so who knows?
I would have said the same thing two weeks ago, if anyone had asked me if T Boone Pickens would have anything even remotely nice to say about any energy source other than oil.
TBP’s “conversion experience” I think is really the businessman’s realization that a) I’m in the business to sell energy and b)my source of energy is almost gone. If I want to stay in business and make money, then I have to find another source of energy to sell. I don’t see Pickens as someone any of us will see holding hands with Al Gore any time soon…but he is a pragmatist and he is a businessman. He’s not about to allow himself to go out of business if there is a way for him to find another source of energy to sell.
Here’s another potential solution for our ruling spendthrifts:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/…..index.html
Zimbabwe, thanks to hyperinflation, has just issued Z$100 billion bank notes….. A trillion currency units would barely buy eight loaves of bread, or 40 oranges.
Let’s (perhaps optimistically) take it a sign of a new age of common sense in America.
Mr. Simpson, thank you very much for coming to this Book Salon. Just a reminder to folks that you can pick up Rob’s book here (a perfect gift for those red but wavering friends and family), and his website, which includes a widget showing what your share of the war’s costs are, is also worth a visit.
An important book that hammers home a simple point, 50 times. :)
Thanks very much for hosting, and for having me – I’ve enjoyed it.
What’s more important than any plan TBP might be offering. One oilman looking at the reality and the big picture and campaigning for it will have an impact. Of course, war for wind is more difficult to sell than war for oil, so it may get some resistance from the MIC. ;)
I think you’re right to a certain degree, but that only begs another question: why aren’t there a bunch of other pragmatic businesspeople coming to the same conclusion? Surely TBP isn’t the only one out there . . .
Thank you for coming. Good luck with sales, and make sure you get out in the mainstream with it.
LL:
SUSTAINED OUTRAGE. From birth to death like every other animal fight to survive. Great post Ian and Rob many thanks for getting the data in print. Who wouldn’t love loan to own and tax cut that cost 10 times the value. We are all the Oligarchy’s sucker.
It seems we should use the money to retrofit America for energy self-sufficiency.
See, I don’t think $1 trillion is enough. I’d like to see a 10-year, multi-trillion project to retrofit every building for solar and the grid for wind, using natural gas and coal as a backup.
For example, take a look at this technology, that Popular Science called the Innovation of the year for 2007: nanosolar foil.
Now, imagine the level of self-sufficiency for America if we put this on every home in America? And then on every business building? For $1 trillion, no problem. There would likely be money left over. And imagine how it would help the balance of trade to export this technology.
I attended a talk a few weeks ago featuring Congressman Ed Perlmutter a few weeks ago. His district includes NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratories in Golden, CO. If you want, I can post video of the talk.
He talked about a bit of “tweeking” NREL did with a hybrid car. They took the battery, made a few adjustments, and got incredible gas mileage: 100 mpg. Then they got crazy, adding solar technology to the hybrid engine. They got about 500 mpg. How about giving them a few more bucks to formalize this upgrade and, oh who knows, come up with a retrofit for all of our vehicles.
Then, let’s install that retrofit and get 100 – 500 mpg on our existing vehicles.
That $1 trillion will pay for itself quickly, at that rate, with money to spare. And medical ailments, like asthma, will fall, saving profound amounts of money on healthcare treatment. Oh, and we’d have to run our air conditioners less because maybe, just maybe, it will stop the catastrophic climate change we call global warming.
“is obsolesced” ouch! Made Obsolescent?
100 mpg – possible. 500 mpg – Not possible above 20 mph. Please cite your references.
:)