What We Could Have Done with the Money: 50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We've Spent on Iraq by Rob Simpson

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. (July 1)

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Solving the Problem You Don't Even See

For most of us, the word "homeless" conjures up images of men begging for money on downtown street corners. Not families. But 600,000 families will experience homelessness this year, including more than a million children.

That's a tragedy for them, but it's also a problem for the rest of us. Homeless children are more likely to be in poor health, to experience developmental delays, to develop mental health problems, and to exhibit behavioral problems. In short, they're much less likely to become law-abiding, productive citizens as adults.

Getting these families into stable housing is not just the compassionate thing to do, it's an investment in our collective future.

The reason we have so many homeless families is, quite simply, the lack of affordable housing. There is no place in America where a minimum wage job provides enough income for a household to afford the rent for a modest apartment. Even earning double the minimum wage won't do it.

Five million American households spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing, meaning they're one car breakdown or layoff or doctor's bill away from the streets.

The good news is, the solution here is simple and, in most cases, permanent.

When homeless families get housing subsidies, they very rarely find themselves facing homelessness again. (They are twenty-one times more likely to remain stably housed than comparable families exiting a shelter without a subsidy.)

There are an estimated 15 million families in America who need assistance to pay for housing. Currently, about a third of them actually get the help they need. Section 8 vouchers provide an average of $6,805 per year per family. So to provide another 10 million vouchers would cost $68,050,000,000.

That's substantially less than we could earn on our trillion dollars, using Roger Ibbotson's market forecast. Ibbotson (Yale University, also Ibbotson Associates) is arguably America's leading market forecaster. He calls for long-term market growth of 9 percent.

So we can get all those families into decent, stable housing. But the story is even more positive than that because the children of homeless families often end up in foster care. Nationally, the average cost of placing the children of a homeless family in foster care is $47,608, almost seven times the cost of a housing subsidy.

Of course, with the subsidy, the family actually stays together.

So a program to reduce family homelessness would be easily affordable, would keep families together, and save 1 million children a year from the litany of problems outlined above.

Chapter Two HABITAT FOR HUMANITY

A Place to Call Home

Say what you will about Jimmy Carter as a president, he's almost certainly the best ex-president we've ever had. As if global diplomacy, the Nobel Peace Prize, a Grammy Award, writing twenty-three books, and fund-raising for great causes weren't enough, he has made Habitat for Humanity one of the most well-known and successful assistance programs in history.

What makes Habitat so popular, I suspect, is that it's not about charity. It is the definitive "hand up, not handout" program. While disadvantaged people across America and around the world now live in homes built by Habitat, nobody gets a free ride. No one gets a Habitat home without contributing both their own money and sweat equity.

There's no denying the need. Around the world, about 1.6 billion people live in substandard housing, most of them in urban slums. In America, the wealthiest nation in history, roughly one-third of us have housing problems, ranging from overcrowding to poor-quality housing to homelessness.

Most of them are working people who simply can't afford decent housing. (Our unemployment rate is usually around 5 percent, yet 33 percent of families have housing problems.) How about we use that trillion dollars to put a proper roof over their heads?

The average cost of a Habitat house in the USA is just under $60,000. Which means that with a trillion dollars (and a lot of work from prospective home owners and Habitat volunteers), we could build housing for 16,666,667 families.

That won't completely solve the problem, because some 65 million people in this country have serious housing problems. But it's one heck of a good start that could make one heck of a difference to our country in the years to come.

That's because home ownership has been proven to encourage families to get more involved in their community; it helps the working poor build wealth; and children who grow up in decent housing are healthier, do better in school, and stay in school longer.

All of which would make this country a better place to call home for all of us.

Chapter Three REBUILDING NEW ORLEANS

Like We Mean It

People have referred to New Orleans as "the city that care forgot" for decades. It used to mean that life was carefree in the Big Easy. In recent years, though, the term has taken on a new and much sadder meaning.

While thousands of Americans have traveled to the Crescent City to help it rebuild, most of us assumed that government would somehow take care of it. Well, government hasn't.

There is much to fault in the rebuilding efforts-the Army Corps of Engineers, for instance, says that the levees "may be" rebuilt by 2011-but let's take the positive approach and think about what we might achieve with, say, a trillion dollars to spend.

Let's start by protecting New Orleans against another Katrina. A total of $8.4 billion has been allocated for the levees. The actual cost to rebuild the levees to withstand a category 5 storm could run to as much as $40 billion. Fine. Do it.

Experts point to disappearing wetlands around New Orleans as one of the reasons the damage from Katrina was so severe, since each mile of wetlands reduces storm surge by several inches. It could cost up to $14 billion to restore coastal wetlands. Do it.

We can put some architectural excitement into the city with the proposed New Orleans National Jazz Center and park. The plan would cover a twenty-acre area and include a new hotel, city hall, concert halls, an open-air park, a jazz museum, and studio and classroom space. A bold vision, with a preliminary price tag of $715 million. Round it up to a billion dollars, and do it.

A proposal has been put forward for a Gulf Coast Civic Works Program, modeled on the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, which would create 100,000 public jobs paying $15 an hour, to help residents get back on their feet and rebuild their communities. Get them working forty hours a week for a year, and the total would only be $3 billion. Pay them a little more, cover the Social Security and Medicare costs, you're still getting away with less than $5 billion. Add in some skilled tradespeople, who will earn more-maybe kick the total up to $6 billion. Throw in half a billion for supplies and we've probably covered the costs of getting power lines, water, and sewers working again.

Some 81,000 families displaced by Katrina still live in FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) trailers. Build them each a $200,000 house. Total spent-$16.2 billion. Heck, upgrade the appliances and put in granite countertops, you're still below $20 billion.

Some 33,000 rental units have been identified as needing to be rebuilt. Let's ballpark $150,000 apiece for them. Approximate total cost, $5 billion.

New Orleans had about 5,100 public housing units. At $150,000 per, that's another $765 million to rebuild them.

Looking beyond buildings, the area's economy is going to need a leg up. Maybe subsidies for opening new businesses on the Gulf Coast. Let's pluck a number out of the sky and dedicate $10 billion to that. No, $20 billion. Then let's spend $100 million on a business-to-business ad campaign to let people know about it. Speaking of advertising, how about another $100 million to encourage the tourists to come back?

Okay, I'm getting down to some relatively small stuff here. And the city that care forgot is starting to feel like the land of opportunity.

Total spent-$107,465,000,000.

And just in case you're inclined to quibble with some of the numbers, let's double that. We're now at $214,930,000,000.

Leaving us almost $800 billion to spend on other things. And leaving at least some of us wondering why this hasn't happened.

Chapter Four MORE COPS, SAFER STREETS

Go Ahead, Be a Streetwalker

I mean that in the nicest way. As in, you should feel free to walk the streets of your neighborhood or even downtown and feel safe doing it.

Is that too much to ask?

Most of us don't feel that way right now. There are parts of every city in America where you wouldn't walk around if you could avoid it. Or even drive through. Bruce Springsteen once sang about the part of town where you don't stop if you hit a red light. Ignoring the fact that perhaps Mr. Springsteen should have his driver's license suspended, he makes a good point.

No doubt, there are deep systemic problems within American society that lead people to a life of crime. We should try to solve them. Maybe some of the suggestions in other chapters (free college education, housing for the working pool health care for all) could help us solve some of those underlying issues. For the moment, though, let's just attack the crime problem head-on.

Let's make it harder for criminals to do criminal things and get away with it. Maybe I've watched a bit too much Law & Order, but I'm thinking that more cops would help us do that.

So here's where I've gone with this one:

The median salary for a patrol officer in the USA is $46,596. According to the Bureau of Justice, there are 663,535 police officers nationwide. With a trillion dollars, we could have thirty-two times that many. Nothing scientific here, but I'm guessing that if your town had thirty-two times as many cops, you might see a decrease in crime. And yes, there would almost certainly be more donut shops.

Looking at it from a slightly more sensible side, we could double the number of police officers in every city and town in America, and cover the cost for the next thirty-two years. Something to think about the next time you hear a sound just as you're dozing off and wonder if it's someone trying to break into your house.

Chapter Five ELECTION CAMPAIGN SPENDING

Let's Buy Back Our Government

We appear to be knee-deep in the first billion-dollar presidential campaign in U.S. history. Of course, if you own a TV, or a radio, or if you're connected to the Internet, or if you read the newspaper, you probably figured as much.

The ads are everywhere. And gosh, but aren't they intelligent and informative? Performing a great service for democracy, don't you think?

Or do they strike you as insulting to your intelligence and an assault on the better principles of democracy? Based on a survey commissioned by the National Voting Rights Institute, I'll guess that your thinking leans more to the latter.

Politics is such a big-money game now that American voters overwhelmingly support limits in spending. Democrats, Republicans, young, old, urban, rural-every demographic, in every region of the country, wants the madness to stop. And yet it doesn't.

Which may contribute to the fact that seven in ten voters think large corporations have too much influence in politics, while two-thirds think ordinary voters do not have enough influence. Two-thirds of voters also believe that spending limits will improve the honesty and integrity of elections.

Here's where it gets really crazy: voters firmly believe that campaign spending limits would cause candidates to spend more time on their official duties and talking about the issues, and that spending limits would allow ordinary citizens to be able to run for office.

Why, it's democracy gone wild!

I know all that stuff about duties and issues and ordinary citizens is pretty radical, but what do you say we give it a shot? We could even give this bold new experiment in government a catchy name, like maybe the American Revolution.

Even with presidential campaigns rolling out at a billion dollars, and gubernatorial campaigns spending tens of millions, and even congressional campaigns getting into seven figures now, we could easily afford to cover the cost with our trillion dollars. The interest alone would finance more campaigning than most of us can endure. (If we're covering the cost, we can set the limits, right?) So let's cover the cost of all election campaigning. Forever.

Suddenly, the people who are elected aren't beholden to big corporations or to big unions or to lobbyists-they're beholden to us!

It's a wacky idea, but it just might work.

Chapter Six THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

If the Government Helps You Start a Business, Is That Capitalism or Socialism?

Maybe we shouldn't get hung up on the labels. Instead, let's focus on the facts:

Small business (defined as businesses with fewer than five hundred employees) accounts for roughly half of our GDP (gross domestic product).

Small businesses have generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually over the last decade. In the most recent year with data-2004-small firms accounted for all of the net new jobs. Yes, all of them. Some large businesses grew, of course, but that growth was offset by large businesses that laid off workers.

Nearly half of all small businesses, 49 percent, as of August 2007 had experienced no employee turnover during the previous twelve months. None.

Thousands of new businesses are founded in the United States each year, and over the last decade the rate of new venture formation has increased.

Due in part to downsizing at large firms and the rapid advancements in information technology, the trend toward more new business start-ups is likely to continue.

There's always a flip side, though:

Between 20 and 30 percent of new start-ups close during their first year of existence.

So what have we got? A sector of the economy that accounts for half of our wealth and most of job growth. Due to the challenges and opportunities in the modern world, our economy will need this sector to expand, despite the fact that it's subject to a high rate of failure.

With a trillion dollars, we could have the largest pool of venture capital in the world. Got an idea for a business? Come on down!

The average solo start-up in America these days needs only $6,000 to get off the ground. Even in businesses started by a team of people, the average required is just $20,000.

So we could fund more than 50 million new businesses. Given that there were 649,700 start-ups in 2006, it would appear that we could significantly increase that annual number. For decades.

Obviously, we'd have to put some restrictions in place. We don't want everybody walking off the job to follow some crackpot scheme. So, sure, you've got to put some of your money into it. You've got to have some sort of plan. But plainly there's more than enough money there to ensure that if you've got a decent idea and a head on your shoulders, we can help you start a business.

If we want to stay on top of the global economy, let's give ambitious, entrepreneurial Americans the money and the tools they need. That'll show the Chinese that we mean business.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from What We Could Have Done with the Money by Rob Simpson
Copyright © 2008 by Robert N. Simpson. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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