mere pixels

Seems like I’m not the only one trying to figure out how we could better speak about and use the arbitrary $700 billion. Here’s a brief roundup.

Jeff Jarvis @ Buzzmachine excerpt:

We could buy 3.5 billion One Laptop Per Child machines. Want world peace and understanding? Give one to every Muslim on earth and every citizen of China (or since China can afford them, make that everyone in India or everyone in Africa and South America combined) and you’d still have more than 500 million machines left over.

Or we could give 4.4 million Americans free college educations at private institutions. We could give 23 million Americans free college educations at public institutions like mine. That alone would improve our competitive position and transform dying industries.

Photo essay from the Chicago Tribune – admittedly some are lame (the Marlins? Seriously…) but do help folks understand the Big’n.

At Consumerist, they take an old NYT infographic about the cost of the current Iraq war and contextualize it for the Big’n:

For $100 Billion you can Universal Health Care for all people in the U.S. without it.

For $35 Billion you can get universal preschool. Half-days for 3-year-olds and full days for 4-year-olds.

For $10 Billion you can carry out all the security recommendations issued by the 9/11 commission.

Mlive (some random ass Michigan website) had a bit more time on their hands than me and have come up with this much longer post:

Seven hundred billion dollars would buy 70 Hubble-type space telescopes. Or about seven international space stations. It would finance the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier medical research institute, for two decades. Or pay the U.S. national intelligence budget for 15 years.

…

Seven hundred billion dollars would cover one year’s health care bills for more than 85 million seniors, disabled people, children and low-income Americans enrolled in the two giant government health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid. This includes the elderly in nursing homes and many of the frailest people in the country, whose care is the costliest to provide. Adding another 4 million children to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, the subject of big congressional battles in recent years, could be done for the relative bargain-basement price of $35 billion over five years.

…

The government could pay off the $550 billion in outstanding student loan debt in the United States, and then some. That’s from both government and private lenders.

But hey, it’s cool. There’s sweeteners to make it all go down better. And if that’s not good enough for you, maybe you better head on out to Americatown.