We need an extra trillion dollars

[Ivan Seeking]

While playing with the numbers and reading some of the current information,
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=108344
it came to my attention that seemingly no matter what we do, and when we know exactly what we will do, it will cost at least a trillion dollars to end our [U.S.] dependence on oil. Also, we can now predict with some degree of certainty the rate at which oil supplies will decline. It seems to me that a time critical budget is in order that has little room for compromise.

 

[fourier jr]

nobel prize winner economist & author of 'globalization & its discontents' joe stiglitz and harvard public finance professor linda bilmes estimated that the iraq war will end up costing $1,000,000,000,000-2,000,000,000,000, depending on how much longer the soldiers are going to stay. that's where your trillion $$$ could have come from!
sum-up from the LA Times
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11595.htm

the original article
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11495.htm

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Imagine that. And we wouldn't even need to be in the ME if it weren't for the oil.

It seems that we can't hope for a serious a national strategy, and I doubt that we can afford to wait for market forces, that is, if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences. So the only answer that I see is to tax the heck out of petro and put the money into alt energy R&D. But of course that will just bloat like drowned pig before long. So how do we ensure that genuine implementation takes place in a timely fashion?

 

[jhe1984]

You guys worry too much. It won't take us too long to print it.
~ Hye Prin-flation

In all seriousness, though, it's an easily solvable problem:

Everytime someone in Europe wins the lotto (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=avLyLdSO_NFc&refer=europe) , we'll just ask the friendly folks at Langley render them.

And everytime an American wins the lottery, we send them on a free trip to Europe - where they are rendered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendition

And in the meantime, we can just get every person in the rest of the continents to start scratching off lottery tickets. That's a lot of chances!

 

[Art]

You guys worry too much. It won't take us too long to print it.
~ Hye Prin-flation

In all seriousness, though, it's an easily solvable problem:

Everytime someone in Europe wins the lotto (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=avLyLdSO_NFc&refer=europe) , we'll just ask the friendly folks at Langley render them.

And everytime an American wins the lottery, we send them on a free trip to Europe - where they are rendered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendition

And in the meantime, we can just get every person in the rest of the continents to start scratching off lottery tickets. That's a lot of chances!

This is the best solution I've seen proposed to date. Maybe it could be expanded to include renditioning the relatives of rich foreigners until a ransom is paid.

 

[jhe1984]

"This is the best solution I've seen proposed to date. Maybe it could be expanded to include renditioning the relatives of rich foreigners until a ransom is paid."


Ahh yes - excellent idea. It could be called "the new foreign exchange rate".

 

[Azael]

While playing with the numbers and reading some of the current information,
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=108344
it came to my attention that seemingly no matter what we do, and when we know exactly what we will do, it will cost at least a trillion dollars to end our [U.S.] dependence on oil. Also, we can now predict with some degree of certainty the rate at which oil supplies will decline. It seems to me that a time critical budget is in order that has little room for compromise.

What kind of timespan are we talking about. One trillion over 50 years is "just" 20 billions a year. If it needs to be done in 10 years that's a whole different ball game.

I don't se why usa has to do it alone either. This seems like it would be the time for europe, asia and america to put there minds togheter and fix this mess. I am sure china and India is very interested in improving there economy without oil.

 

[Azael]

I don't know if taxing the heck out of petrol is the solution either. Many european countries do it already(one liter of gas in sweden is 1,5 dollar, that's around 6 dollars/gallon). But then again the gas tax money doesn't go to alternative fuel research. It goes straight into the bloated budgest of our inefficient socialist goverments

 

[edward]

Along with saving our pennies to acquire that extra trillion which we will need to ween ourself from oil, we must first consider how we are going to pay off the current national debts. According to the, Feb AARP Bulletin, that debt amounts to $156,000 for every person in America.

I might have to turn to one of our newest service economy businesses, and get a payday loan to come up with my share.

 

[Mk]

Why do we need to "ween ourself from oil?"

 

[fourier jr]

i thought oil was going to run out someday, unless i heard wrong?

 

[Mk]

I don't think we really actually know how much oil is down there. How close are the estimates? Well, we wouldn't know would we? How? I heard on the Rush Limbaugh show that some places in the Gulf of Mexico that proved to have no oil, 8 years later the same people found oil squirting out of the sea floor.

 

[crazycalhoun]

nobel prize winner economist & author of 'globalization & its discontents' joe stiglitz and harvard public finance professor linda bilmes estimated that the iraq war will end up costing $1,000,000,000,000-2,000,000,000,000, depending on how much longer the soldiers are going to stay. that's where your trillion $$$ could have come from!
sum-up from the LA Times
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11595.htm

the original article
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11495.htm

I like this line.

Putting that into perspective, the highest-grossing movie of all time, "Titanic," earned $1.8 billion worldwide — about half the cost the U.S. incurs in Iraq every week.

So for 16 bucks a week, I get to help democratize the Middle East.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I heard on the Rush Limbaugh show

I hope that you don't believe anything that you hear.

 

[Astronuc]

Well Congress is increasing the debt ceiling - again!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5282521
Congress Set to Raise Federal Debt Limit Again
by David Welna - NPR

Faced with a potential government shutdown, the Senate is expected to vote on raising the nation's debt limit for the fourth time in five years. The debt now stands at more than $8.2 trillion.

Like many cash-strapped Americans who have maxed-out credit cards, the federal government has hit its limit for borrowing funds to keep operating. If the limit isn't raised, the government likely will run out of borrowing authority within days, risking a shutdown.

When President Bush took office five years ago, the national debt was at $5.6 trillion; since then, big budget surpluses have collapsed into huge deficits, and the debt has shot up nearly 50 percent.

NPR

Federal debt has risen from $542 billion to more than $8 trillion since 1975. Debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, once at 34.7%, is now above 60%

NPR
Actually these ratios/percentages are misleading. The debt is cumulative over years, and the quarterly GDP is on the order of $12 trillion, or the annual GDP for fiscal 2005 was about $49 trillion, so the cumulative debt is about 16% of last years GDP.

See Table 3 - http://www.bea.gov/bea/newsrel/gdpnewsrelease.htm (data may change quarterly)

Treasury Secretary John Snow wrote congressional leaders last week, imploring them to immediately raise the $8.2 trillion debt limit. The House has put the new limit at $9 trillion.

Hey it's only money.

 

[Amp1]

Yeah, now the average J Q public has a debt of 30,000 per person. And the debt has a percentage of GNP is more than 60%. But hey it was more after WW1 and I think WW2, it was more also when the USA was a fledgling country. Never mind that we are now considered a developed country and one of the richest in the world.