I want to know what 5 million times $30,000 is. I think it’s $150 billion.

30 times 5 million is 150 million. A thousand millions is a billion. Yup. That’s right.

Let’s see. TARP cost $900 billion. The Recovery Act cost $700 billion.

That’s 1.7 TRILLION dollars, my friend. Stack those dollars as high as the moon.

For One tenth of that we could pay 5 million people a $30,000 salary. With $20 billion left over for incidentals.

I’m no economist but I know that labor is roughly one quarter of the cost of doing business, so we would actually need $600 billion for our “company”, which is still about one third of TARP+Recovery.

Now, what will our company do with all this labor and capital?

- Rebuild the national electric grid to improve on the senseless amount of energy lost in transmission, and to bring clean sources such as solar and wind from places like the desert to where it’s needed.

- Build a national network of reservoirs, aquifers and pipes to capture enough precipitation to keep the entire country flowing with water, no matter how “dry” their conditions may become.

- Build a network of waste water treatment plants, which produce two important things: clean water and fertilizer. Build enough of them at a high enough standard to return it to the water cycle.

- Build solar. Build wind. Build nuclear.

- Build fast train tracks. When fast trains are quicker than planes and can run on renewable energy, we will be able to wind down our reliance on jets, which are expensive and require fossil fuels.

- Construct new buildings and rehab existing buildings to become as energy efficient as possible. Require existing government buildings to have these makeovers.

There are others. Feel free to add your own. Increase and decrease the size of the work force as economic conditions change.

Put workers who want to work back to work. Rebuild this great country. Leave our children in better condition than the world was as we found it. Learn the lessons of a civilized people and adapt accordingly.

Get stuff done!

Who’s with me?

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