Find the million poorest people in the country that whose financial hardships are not their own fault. Put a million dollars in an interest bearing account for each of them, so they are making app. $80,000 a year without touching the original million. When they die, commit felonies, or do something really irresponsible with their money, take the principal and give it to someone else who qualifies.
I would put it all into new nuclear power plants across the US, along with any necessary upgrades into the power grid. If we can drop our need for oil for power plants by a significant percentage, then the investment would pay off nicely in an improved GDP and trade balance. I would need to pass some legislation making it so that impact statements for certain types of plants are automatic, etc. so that the plants actually get built rather than be held up due to anti-nuke folks. I would also require that the construction be done by as close to 100% US based firms, employees and supplies as possible (short-term job creation along with long-term benefits).
Secondary use might be to build some serious desalinization plants on both coasts (though I believe that the West is at greater risk) to get ahead of the water wars.
Thought process - we should only borrow money for infrastructure investing - not for any program spending. Programs such as Medicare and Social Security need to pay for themselves, and the Military should be paid for by current taxes. Borrowed cash should only be used for long-term infrastructure investments in our nation.
- Nation runs on solar power. Prepares for shower of roses
I guess we’re getting our answer to the hypothetical:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Financial-Meltdown.html?exprod=myyahoo
I’d have to go along with those who voted for converting the energy supply from coal and oil. If you do it right (wrap up the intellectual property rights), then you could afford to pay back the loan and sell new energy systems to the Chinese!
If someone figures out fusion or something, I kind of doubt anyone would give a flying fuck about that “intellectual property” thing. Some countries already tell drug companies to stuff their patents, and fusion would be far bigger. Would be interesting at least…
Considering the hazards of continuing as we are now with fossil fuels, I’ll give them the new technology! It’s not as if global warming were a local phenomenon, or China were a small population.
I’m torn between clean energy and infrastructure. Both would create large numbers of jobs, both would protect many people from huge dangers that they don’t necessarily even realize exist.
But on the whole, I have to come down on the side of the clean energy. This is brutal, but if a single large dam goes, the chances are good that a lot of states will wise up and pony up the money themselves, having seen just how bad the alternative is. When global warming tragedy hits (like the Greenland Icecap melting), it may well be sudden, it’s going to be irreversible, and it’s going to hit pretty much all the coasts at once, not one at a time. In the meantime the storms and the droughts are wreaking havoc in the tropics, and even in some termperate regions. It’s a worldwide problem, rather than a strictly American one.
America already owes China more than a trillion bucks so, obviously, China did have the trillion bucks to lend. And the figure grows by something like 17 billion a month. And America is not investing it but blowing it.
I’d decline the offer. The federal debt needs to be paid off, not expanded.
I think the global warming threat is both more immediate and far more dangerous. Humanity can survive financial catastrophe.