If you had a say in the occurance of one of these episodes in the history of the US, which one would you elect to cancel.
The purpose of this poll is to ascertain SDMB priorities and the sense of magnitude of these disasters.
My vote is for the Afghanistan War. This is the one one disaster that the entire populace through their government can take some responsibility for. The financial impact must be enormous. The loss of life way in excess of the trigger.
The results of this poll will give me some idea where our priorities lie. Environment, Human Life,or the Economic Quality of American Life.
Foreign wars do not affect the average citizen in any real way. I highly doubt that will come out on top (just my prediction).
I voted for the recession. Because I am directly affected when my family members and friends lose their jobs and/or homes because of it. My dollar loses spending power, and that REALLY SUCKS.
Either way they’re individually silly hypotheticals, but I think the point of the exercise is interesting enough to warrant participation.
The Afghan War was/is a necessary action. If you were to cancel it, I’d vote to have it reinstated, actually.
The oil spill turned out to not really be that bad. Sure, there was, what, a billion dollars lost? That’s nothing in the grand scheme of things.
The recession is the only thing that makes sense in this case. It’s causes trillions of dollars to just evaporate. The entire country (nay, the world!) can’t find work. Our economy is STILL struggling. The Dow dropped 5,000 points. Savings and investments have plummeted.
I voted for the recession, as at least the Taliban was thrown out. Though our actual goal of catching Osama was lost, the women were treated awful by the Taliban.
Making the recession disappear only postpones it. The economy expands and contracts and this recession had to happen eventually. If it didn’t happen a couple of years ago we would still have had the conditions that led to it. It was inevitable. Does choosing to make the recession disappear also make the housing bubble, the stock market bubble, and the shenanigans on Wall Street disappear? If so, people would never have had all the worth (high house prices, high stock market gains) that they lost in the crash.
The war in Afghanistan had to happen, too. Or were we going to let Osama bin Laden get away with 9/11 without a fight? We didn’t achieve the goals we set out to achieve, but I don’t think not trying was an option. [That said, I would have cut our losses long ago. I also would never have gone into Iraq.]
I pick the oil spill. It’s a random, independent event. It didn’t have to happen, unlike the other two things.
Given the choice, the recession. Afghanistan was probably necessary (if botched) and the BP spill, while bad, is getting back to normal. But the recession looks like it’ll go on for a very long time, and more Americans are suffering because of it than the other two combined.
The recession, because of necessity getting rid of it would imply much better governance in the US, and much less influence of the moneymen over US policy. Right now it’s gotten down to, “one dollar one vote.” Remember “one man one vote”? Ah, the good old days.
The recession was CAUSED by bad fiscal policy, it could easily have been PREVENTED by good fiscal policy. To wit: not getting rid of Glass-Steagel back during the Clinton Administration (dont get your hopes up, Republicans, it was a Republican Congressional initiative. That was the legislation that allowed banks to get into casino gambling, i.e., derivatives. Shutting down ARMs when the mortgage industry starting writing them back in the 80s would have prevented a lot of bad lending, plus … no matter what the fucking libertarians and conservatives say, regulation is a GOOD thing: it might have prevented quite a few of the terrible loans that were written in the last two decades, hell it might have prevented the BP oil spill.
Afghanistan … not sure going in was a mistake, I’m pretty sure staying there is. It’s just a money sink full of corrupt warlords.
The OP picked the wrong war. Afghanistan pretty much had to happen, once we tied Al Qaeda to 9/11, asses needed kicked. No idea why we’re still there, but don’t fault us for going.
Iraq should never have happened. We had no damn business invading them.