What We Could Have Done with the Money
50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We've Spent on Iraq
-
- USD 9.99
-
- USD 9.99
Publisher Description
The war in Iraq is not only controversial, it's also astronomically expensive. Now Rob Simpson answers the question many concerned Americans have been asking: Wasn't there some other way the government could have spent one trillion of our tax dollars?
What We Could Have Done with the Money presents 50 thought-provoking spending alternatives. With a trillion dollars, we could . . .
Fix Social Security right now: Stop worrying. Stop debating. It's done. Over. Fixed. End homelessness in America: House 15 million homeless families, get a million kids out of foster care, and have change to spare! Give everyone in the world satellite TV: Can we have the revolution later? I'm watching CSI right now. Pay everyone in Iraq to be nice to each other: Hey! If someone tripled your salary for the next 20 years, wouldn't you behave? Go Green: Give 100 million car buyers a $10,000 subsidy on their hybrid. Or gold . . . : Pave every highway in America with gold leaf. Play ball!: Fly everyone in Iraq to America, put them up in a nice hotel for three days with all the extras, take them to a baseball game and fly them home . . . and have a lot leftover. Cure cancer: Double research spending for as long as it takes.. . . not to mention paying all credit card debt, buying everyone in the world an iPod, building 75 million solar-powered homes, and 39 other revealing pipe dreams.
Shocking, thought-provoking, and incredibly entertaining, Simpson takes a hard look at the government's top priorities--both what they are and what they should be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With acerbic wit and contagious indignation, Simpson examines how the United States could have better spent the trillion dollars allocated to fund the Iraq War. His 50 alternatives mix the satirical with the sincere: paving America's streets with gold, paying off the entire country's credit card debt, providing every human on earth with an iPod, flying all Iraqi citizens to a Major League Baseball game as well as caring for returning veterans, providing free college education for all Americans, rebuilding New Orleans and rectifying Social Security and Medicare. Although Simpson clearly means to entertain, his slim book is also a provocation and call to action he astutely notes that even a fraction of the trillion dollars could have been spent beefing up woefully understaffed American airport security or developing technologies to massively reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil measures that would arguably do much in guaranteeing American security. Whatever their political affiliation or support for the war, readers will confront the financial cost of the war and re-examine their government's and their own priorities.
