Science Forums 2

[coberst]

Originally Posted by pgrmdave

We just committed to roughly $700 billion dollars in relief for the financial markets. Imagine what kind of economic stimulus we would get if we spent that money in other ways:

Transportation - A strong national rail system, both for freight and passengers, would benefit industry, commerce, tourism in the long run, and construction and engineering in the short term.

Education - Investments in teacher education, basic supplies, and improvements to existing buildings would boost construction and education, once again providing both short and long term relief.

Tax benefits for reduced gas consumption - provide tax incentives to drive a vehicle that gets X mpg or better, reduce current mass transportation prices massively and improve quality, provide incentives to car companies to manufacture and sell cars with better gas mileage. Not only would we help the environment, we would be reducing our dependence on foreign oil and improving our trade deficit (potentially).

Technology infrastructure - The same way the US forced the phone companies to provide service to everybody, we should force them to provide broadband internet access to everybody. Perhaps also provide free wireless service in designated urban areas (though at a basic level, so as not to directly compete with the private sector too much). This would provide IT jobs and reduce the information divide, especially helping rural poor. Improved access to information would help educate our workforce.


These are just some basic ideas off the top of my head, and I suspect that most of them are better than the financial bailout, and all of them are better than starting a war, fictitious or not.

I agree. The question then is 'why are we not only willing but eagar to spend money and lives on war and unwilling to spend money on the "good"?

Therein lay the rub. The Critical Thinker might ask Why do humans do the things they do and can we do better?