If you had a trillion dollars...

In My Humble Opinion
21

These plans are all, with the possible exception of the private space program, not ambitious enough. People don’t have a feel for just how vast a trillion dollars is.

For example, according to this table of economic indicators, the national government of Canada spent a total of 453 billion Canadian dollars in 2001. That’s for everything. So, with a trillion dollars, you could fund the Canadian government’s existing programs for well over two years, not require Canadians to pay federal taxes during that time, and make thirty million people (including myself) very happy. :slight_smile:

22

I would buy a dozen Maclaren F1’s (sp?).
My take away orders WILL be delivered in less than 10 minutes.

23

I know I don’t have a feel for how big a trillion dollars is, Sunspace. That’s where the bit about sitting and thinking comes in. :slight_smile:

Honestly, I’d try to get rid of most of it- I can’t think in that big a scope. All I’d really want from it is financial independence and a bunch to give to friends and charities. Oh yeah, and the best server possible for the SDMB, of course. I’m not sure I’d give it to the Canadian government, though…

24

Personal Space Station

Oh yeah, space hookers.

25

I’d buy the bank where my husband works - and make him Bank President.

I’d take 3000 of my closest friends on a world cruise.

I’d donate my house to the city so they can burn it down.

Build a big ol’ house with a mother-in-law wing and a brother wing.

I’d have a Live-In Housekeeper (and I’d call him/her Alice!)

26

Buy a small tropic island with a dunam or two of arable land.

Lots and lots of books.

A good telescope.

And spend the rest of my life reading, taking care of the plants, fishing and watching the stars. Alone.

Oh yeah, that thingie that throws plates to the sky for you to shoot on will be great. :slight_smile:

27

(more)

I’ll also fund projects I have interest in. Specifically lots of cool space stuff and some sort of Encyclopedia Galactica.

28

I spend my days having sex and barking orders at people. I’d be king . . .

29

I’d put it in the bank, and try to find a way to somehow live on the ~$50,000,000,000 per year interest.

:smiley:

Or, I’d spend each day looking for something worth spending $5,000,000 on. Assuming I live a fairly long and healthy life, I might manage to spend most of the money before I die. But probably not …

30

It’s $1,000,000,000,000 folks… that’s a thousand billion dollars or a million million dollars.

Maybe this will give you an idea of how much this is.

If you invested that amount and got a return of 10% a year you’d receive $100,000,000,000 in interest yearly or $27,397,260.27 in interest every day, $19,025.87 a minute, or $317.00 a second.

I would set about making the world a better place and enlist the aid of like minded individuals in an effort to eradicate poverty, disease, and hunger.

I would buy my own tropical island and work towards creating my own small utopian society. We’d all live very well as we worked towards making the world a better place.

And…

Seeing Canadian hockey teams survive would be a priority, besides owning the Canadiens I would make sure every Canadian club was financially secure.

I’d travel and give money to deserving charities and organizations.

I’d probably still have enough money left at the end of each day to work on completing my pen collection… :slight_smile:

31

Man, would my porn collection be HUGE!

Whoops, I meant to say “cure cancer and promote world peace.”

32

I’m assuming either this is after taxes or I’m above the law.

Give about 3/4 of it to charity right off the bat (which leaves me with 250 billion). These would include inner city school systems, AIDS research (as well as bringing cheap drugs to Africa), some absurd number of academic scholarships for the disadvantaged, Tuskegee University (where my parents went to college, perpetually cash-strapped), providing necessities (food, clothing, schooling) to starving and malnourished and disadvantaged children around the world, missionaries, and setting up an infrastructure to make sure the money is being used well.

Fund an independent space program(let’s say that’s 100 billion, leaves me with 150 billion).

Buy a good-sized island in the South Pacific somewhere and fit it to my specifications (for easiness with the math, we’ll round this up to 1 billion, though I’m not sure I’d be able to spend that much; this leaves me with 149 billion).

I have no idea what I’d do with the remaining 149 billion dollars. Probably pump it back into the charities, eventually.

33

I’d try to buy one of the smaller islands of Hawaii, as my own personal billionaires playground (who owns it anyway?).

Buy a learjet, and a helicoptor.

Buy all my family the house and car of their dreams, and give them enough money to never have to work again.

Buy myself a fleet of cars, including:

Bentley Turbo
Mercedes S600
Lambo Murcielagro
Ferrari Enzo

Give a lot to charity.

Invest in new schools, build some free-treatment hospitals.

34

“…Haven’t you always wanted a Mon-KEY?!?”

35
  1. Buy an island.
  2. Buy a shitload of guns and bullets.
  3. Move this thread to IMHO.

One outta three ain’t bad.

36

Yeah – if I remember correctly, the US GDP is somewhere around 6 trillion annually. Where’s this money coming from? If i spend it, is it going to devalue the American dollar drastically?

[sub]okay, so that’s no fun. Forget about that[/sub]

How much was Bush’s presidential campaign? I’ll quintuple that next cycle, get a good candidate in office. No problem.

That’s easily less than 0.1% of my dough, so let’s get moving. I’ll form the largest non-governmental organization in history, with a 50 Billion-dollar annual budget, designed to tackle big problems. Starting with famine.

If we can ever eliminate famine (or at least reduce the numbers of people suffering from malnutrition down to 5% of current numbers), we’ll move on to global warming. After that, I’m not sure: we’ll evaluate causes.

Meanwhile, I’ll be super-selfish and live off of $100,000 a year – at least, I’ll do that for a few years until I have a house, a nice car, and a few other luxuries. Then I’ll drop down to a more reasonable expense account for myself.

Before everything, I’ll take a million dollars from the trillion to distribute amongst my nonwealthy family and friends. I’ll make sure they can all afford a decent downpayment on a decent house, that they’ve all got health insurance, and that they can all take a great vacation to wherever they want. More selfish money.

But honestly, my needs aren’t that big. I’m more impressed by the idea of how I can affect the world than by how big a space station I can get.

Daniel

37

Actually the US GDP is 10 trillion, more or less, according to the CIA World Factbook. But I do agree that most people don’t entirely have a handle on how much a trillion dollars is – on the other hand, it also isn’t enough to do some things.

Me, I’d devote the entire sum to one purpose only – developing the technology needed to build a space elevator and then building it. From there, making space travel into an industry would be child’s play. The Space Elevator concept has been seriously studied by many people including NASA, and we’re close to having the technology to be able to do it, but probably not the funding in our lifetimes. Some people estimate 15-50 billion to build one, I think it would be more on the scale of a few hundred billion.

Nothing frivolous for me like a personal aircraft carrier. Just a gigantic corporation dedicated to building one – and an island in the Pacific equatorial region to build it on, of course.

-Psi Cop

38

Well, in predictable and pedestrian fashion, I’d pay off the remaining mortgages and/or debts of m’self, and our close friends, neighbors* and family.

Then, I’d try to ensure that we get to enjoy these paid-off homes for a good long time by placing a $100,000 bounty on the head of every confirmed terrorist bad-guy type, (triple bounty for those confirmed to be working with biologial/chemical/radioactive weapons designed for use against civilians and other non-combatants) foreign and domestic, and take out ads in Guns ‘N’ Ammo, Soldier of Fortune, and the NRA newsletter advertising the fact.

Me, I want the evening news to go back to being boring and drawn-out, instead of depressing and alarming. I’m sick of all this gloom and doom shit.

*[sub]See, most of our close friends are our nieghbors, and likewise widdershins. This way, we get to keep the folks we like around us.[/sub]

39

I think I might buy Cuba. Unless I could afford New Zealand.
Or maybe end world hunger , I mean 1 trillian is only $166 per human being on the planet, but with careful management it should be possible.

Cheers, Bippy

40

I was just thinking about that fine cinematic production Brewster’s Millions, in which the Richard Pryor character spends millions encouraging New Yorkers to vote for “None of the Above” in a mayoral campaign. It’s a tempting idea.

I would certainly be tempted to give a few million to the other political parties, if only to try and raise the awareness of Americans that there are other options available.