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From the SA article...

The federal government would have to invest more than $400 billion over the next 40 years to complete the 2050 plan. That investment is substantial...

I dunno. What president in his right mind would ever spend 400 billion on a national security issue?

[rimshot] ...and don't forget to tip your waitresses.

Another web search and a quick 'multiply by 30 for the daily amount' shows George's Folly is costing Americans 8.25 billion a month.

Can't give the American kids healthcare, though. Jesus wouldn't want that shit on his watch!

They take advantage of the gullible nature of most people.

Nothing really new about that. Tried and true it is in everything from politics to advertising. They're the same kind of people. You gotta use what works. In fact right now they're trying to convince us that some guy Osama was behind the the WTC attack. And check it out. All those gullible people still believe it. Conspiracy theory is big business. And very profitable indeed.

Think it could be done for $473 billion? I do.

I'm continually depressed by the sheer number of great things we could have accomplished with even 1/10 of the money we've wasted in Iraq.

Take a look at the budget to get an idea of where the money is going instead of somewhere constructive.

It looks like a lot of it went to making that page as indecipherable as possible. I think someone inadvertently created a new crypto algorithm. Let's use something with a little more impact.

See for yourself. More than $20,000 every ten seconds. War is much more profitable than wind.

According to this page, when I looked at it, the US could have built 4,722.5 miles of maglev track for the cost of the war in Iraq. That's nearly twice the distance between NY and LA, as the crow flies.

For anyone who hasn't seen it yet...
Iraq Counter
I don't even know what to say; this is fucking insane

benefit from the services provided by tax revenues?

Yes, I shudder to think what Iraq must be costing the US. If you have to have a war, do it well, or lose it relatively quickly, develop an anti-war stance, and become an economic superpower like Germany & Japan.

Unfortunately, it is a fraction (around 25%) of what we spend on other things.

Let me put it like this:

SETI costs us, at most, $5,000,000 a year to fund.
The war against Boogiemen, in Iraq alone, is costing us ~$116,750,000,000 a year to fund.
SETI's lifetime cost thus far has been 115,000,000 (assuming 5million/year. 5mil is the most it costs per year, 4 million the least)

Mathtime! 115,000,000 / 116,750,000,000 = 0.000985010707

Yes, the lifetime cost of SETI has been but 0.000985010707% of the cost of ONE YEAR in Iraq.

.001% of the cost of one year of a bullshit war to fund a search for proof that we're not alone in the universe?
Hell yes.

Hell
Yes

Hell
Fucking
Yes

Sources:
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_faq.html
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html

Let me put it like this: SETI costs us, at most, $5,000,000 a year to fund. The war against Boogiemen, in Iraq alone, is costing us ~$116,750,000,000 a year to fund. SETI's lifetime cost thus far has been 115,000,000 (assuming 5million/year. 5mil is the most it costs per year, 4 million the least) Mathtime! 115,000,000 / 116,750,000,000 = 0.000985010707 Yes, the lifetime cost of SETI has been but 0.000985010707% of the cost of ONE YEAR in Iraq. .001% of the cost of one year of a bullshit war to fund a search for proof that we're not alone in the universe? Hell yes. Hell Yes Hell Fucking Yes Sources: http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_faq.html http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html

If we stopped paying for the War in Iraq, we could pay off this WTO fine 4.6 times over!

Mod it Off-Topic if you like, but I think it puts both blunders (Iraq and WTO) into better perspective.

To answer the obvious question, total direct financial costs are more than $450bn, so that's about 4000 miles. However, if you use the Iraq example for a projection of the actual costs versus the estimate, it will only pay for a quick ride to the suburbs.

Now, if the adminstration would handle the war properly...

I would hardly call it improper if my bank account was filling up this fast. I'm sure that all the "important" people are quite pleased with the results so far. And they'd just as soon that congress and the rest of us would mind our own business and quit meddling in theirs.

You got me curious, so I did a little math.

Cost of the war so far (not counting amount we'll waste before this blunder is done with): $420B.
Cost of superconducting maglev track per mile in the US for long distances: $15-20M. Let's say 20M.
Miles we could build: 21,000
Distance across continental America, east to west: ~2500 mi
Distance across continental America, north to south: ~1250 mi

For that money, we could build ~5 east-west cross-country routes and ~7 north-south routes, or 4 and 9, or whatever. Another way to put it: we could add almost half of our entire length of interstate highways in superconducting maglev. Other methods, like inductrac, could be much cheaper and cover more miles.

Or, we could use the money to kill a bunch of brown people overseas for no good reason. Either way works, I suppose.

-TFA says thet they need 35megabux over five to seven years to say "go or no" on this...
Assuming the standard 300% to 500% cost overrun, it STILL chump change in the greater scheme of BS...
(that is to say, Big Science, in case you were wondering)

Even if the technology doesn't directly lead to commercial fusion power, it is probable that enough physics and engineering will be learned that the amount in question is ... CHUMP CHANGE!* (about what we, that is to say, US flushes down the crapper in Iraq every 16 or so hours (assuming 500% overrun vs estimated costs fo r the z-machine project and 400 Billion butcher-bill over 4 years of ...war

http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com _wrapper&Itemid=182,
  or you may instead prefer http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954/))

Engineering research vs. a war... which is likely to yield a superior Return On Investment?

*In the unlikely event that it fails to be completly obvious to some ./'ers who are not native English speakers, the idiom "chump change" means "a quantity of money that, in the context of the present discussion, is utterly trivial".

Wouldn't it be great to just have 1% of the money that Microsoft has wasted on this? I'd retire.

That's not good enough. I want more. I want to see my bank account do this! That's some serious fundage... dude.

for a very worthwhile project. And people have a problem with that?? Well, that's nice...

4 billion in Iraq, isn't it?

400 billion, FWIW. Javascript Ticker

Many people in the U.S. are too poor to afford a computer or a monthly charge for internet access. Part of the problem is all of the money that was once partly theirs is being spent to kill other people.

-
Here is my summary of U.S. government corruption. Where's yours?

We can already count lost sheep. Yanking this off the firehose even though it was slowly rising:

Science Daily is reporting that researchers at the Carnegie Institution and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have found that crop losses owing to global warming exceeded $100 billion between 1981 and 2002 http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Sci ence&article=UPI-1-20070316-15391700-bc-us-climate change-crops.xml. This is of interest not just because this indicates that warming is not good for crops, at least in the way that we grow them now, but that attempts to reduce warming through substituting biofuels for fossil fuels may be squeezed by this effect.

The estimated cost of crop losses is about 25% of the cost of the Iraq war so far http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com _wrapper&Itemid=182.
--
Do something: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Our (United States) government does nothing for us (the people).

For fuck's sake, most of the federal budget is entitlements and crap. What more do you want?

http://nationalpriorities.org/images/stories/chart spage/TotalOutlaysFY2006.gif

You're proposing multiple such backbones. Find a way to squeeze $1,000 out of every man, woman, and child in the U.S., and you're probably in the ballpark.

The cost of the war, $360 billion http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com _wrapper&Itemid=182 divided by $30K, this retail install cost for a grid tied system comes to 12 million systems. There are 300 million Americans so that is one system per 25 people, or maybe 1 for every 7 families (3.41 family size). If we go by cost to install rather than retail assuming 300 MW/year production facilites, we get to 1 for every 3.5 families. Call it one in four. This is roughly what the grid can handle in renewables without new engineering. So, yes for the cost of the war we could shift to about 25% renewables. However, we borrowed to pay for the war on the good faith and credit of the US Goverment. If we borrowed to convert to renewables we could do it with clearly secured credit, so it might end up being cheaper depending on how the financing is arranged.

I went and found a cite for you http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com _wrapper&Itemid=182. Maybe the OP figured it was so easy to find that you wouldn't come back asking for a cite before at least googling a simple phrase like "cost of the iraq war" Looking further into it to make sure that site is not pulling numbers out of it's ass I checked this page http://costofwar.com/numbers.html which documents how they calculated the total from congressional documents.

Hey, there are pretty pictures, too. Plus, I can think of 355 billion dollars spent a lot less wisely.

Lucus must want money. He certainly wouldn't make another IJ movie because it would be interesting. It's pathetic when a billionaire is so addicted to money that he will do anything to get it, especially when what he will do to get money is sell people on the idea that violence is glamorous. We have the Iraq war because so many U.S. citizens are excited, not disgusted, by violence, any violence. And the war has made the U.S. poor and bankrupt.

--
My corruption summary. Please make your own.

Here's some cocktail napkin math to back up my point.

Cost of war in Iraq - $350 billion (so far)
Cost of the first large scale solar power tower - $100 million (cost declines with each plant built)
So if, instead of going to war in Iraq, we had diverted 100% of that money into producing renewable power, we could have built at least 3500 solar power plants in Nevada. At approx. 40 MW each, this would produce a total of 140,000 MW, or 87 times as much as the largest nuclear plant in the world. (which won't even be finished until 2010)

Not many people will deny that Iraq was a war about oil and control of said oil. So, instead of going to war in Iraq, we COULD HAVE built enough solar power generation to replace hundreds of coal and oil burning power plants with clean, efficient, low maintenance solar towers. So tell me again, which type of power is more efficient?

Your link is a bit light on details, especially when it's been written 3 years before the real appearance of coins and notes. I haven't been able to find a clear figure, but let's assume yours is right. In this article, however, some economist seems to imply that the cost will be recouped within 5 years. It's specifically for Dutch businesses, but I don't see why it would be different everywhere else.
Now, I think the cost of changing mere bits of paper and metals must have been chump change compared to the lost ability to run deficits or devaluate, for example (Germany seems to have suffered a lot from that).

In addition, $100bn might look like a lot to us mere mortals, but if you spread it over countless businesses (the small article actually doesn't even say if the affected businesses include those of UK, Sweden, Denmark, others), it probably is much less impressive. Just think about the war in Iraq, more than $300bn and counting, and it doesn't look to me like the population of the US is starving, neither are the businesses collapsing. Plus, the US is not in the same situation as the EU, and it's absolutely not needed to change everything in just a few weeks: a few years would do.

Now, honestly, I don't care that much if you change your bills or not, as I'm not planning on simultaneously going blind and moving to the US anyway. I was just saying, if the EU can do it without being too affected (and honestly, we don't hear that many businesses complaining on this side), it's not out of reach of the US.

Finally, and sorry for this long piece, I'm sorry but I absolutely don't see how raising the bar makes counterfeiting easier. It's not like the banknotes and the coins were changed each and every year and confusing the hell out of the people. It's more like with home scanners and printers getting so advanced, it would have been really easy for any dude with less than $500 equipment to be able to start counterfeiting if no change was introduced.

Forget Mars, we could be well on our way to Jupiter. According to this we are talking about a little under $350 billion or so. This will be much more before a successful exit.

...we, as a country, have our priorities straight.

The current cost of the war in Iraq to the American people is about $344bn, more than 2.5 times the *total* cost of the Apollo Program, inflation-adjusted. Wow, that fucking sucks.

A bigot is someone who is intolerant of opinions differing from their own.

I've lived outside of the US and have no ethnic or religious hang-ups.

I encourage people to emigrate or immigrate wherever they want by whatever legal means they choose.

I'm saddened that we've let "the American Dream" die and wonder how or if we can revive it. Obviously what we're doing isn't working. We're in an *ECONOMIC* spiral - not a racial or religious one. Stay focused.

We're entering into an unprecedented period of global prosperity. Unfortunately, it's coming at the expense of the standard of living of most Americans.

Maybe it's time to move to a country that doesn't have to spend 28% of my taxes on the military, and 18% on interest on the national debt.

Nice straw man. When I'm talking "let's cut the military budget", I'm talking Iraq, Star Wars, nuclear weapons development, CIA black operations, secret prisons, sales of weapons to other countries like Iraq, etc. I've seen figures that put Iraq costs at more than $500 billion. If you use "official figures" you get something like $340 billion. Using your figures that would account for all borrowing by the government for 1/3 of the year, it's not an insignificant amount.

You are not thinking very critically if you think that the cost of something like the War on Iraq all fall under the umbrella of the military budget and is not part of the budget of these other services. You're basically trying to interpret my argument as saying all of the budget of these other services rather than the point I was making about how these funds are hidden in a portion of the budget of other services.

You also fail to address my point about the previously borrowed money for military expenses like "money borrowed in 1991 to pay the fuel bill for the 101st Airborne during Desert Storm". It is a very important point that the bulk of our debt is to pay for past military adventures. It's disingenious to not label these expenses as military expenses rather than lump them in as debt expense. If the government is borrowing $2.55 billion a day, I want the portion that is being used to pay for current or past military operations to be included in the military portion of the budget. Then, we might get somewhat of a real sense of how much of our money is going to the military. Here's a hint. It's not 20%.

There is a huge difference. I would say WORRYING (and thus planning for the prevention of) intelligent threats is far smarter, as they are a longer term threat that much be planned for as opposed to truly random threats which must be dealt with as they arrive.

I think we should worry and invest just as much in "non-intelligent" long term risks. If the US invested as much attention and money into non-intelligent risks we would have saved more lives now than in preventions of possible loss of life from terrorism. The Iraq war has cost about about 300 Billion to date (heres a running counter), and that's not including known future costs such as supporting medical expenses of injured vets - overall, according to an estimate by Joseph Stiglitz, a nobel prize economist and Harvard's Linda Bilmes, it is estimated to be above 1 trillion and up to 2.66 trillion! If we had put that much attention and money into the highest causes of death in the US (say automotive safety and medical research), how many lives would we have saved vs possible terrorists threats prevented? And that's not even opening the discussion that it's possible that all the extra terrorism attention has actually increased the numbers of potential terrorists as well as the probabiltiy of successful terrorist attacks.

From this, I take from Bruce's comments that we need to take human tendencies into account and systematically and soberly quantify risks from all sources unnatural and natural.

Charter flights
1) use more fuel.
2) cost twice as much or more.
3) are more risky.
4) are much slower.

Just imagine if all flight was moved to charter flights, you would have 1) an energy crises 2) magnitudes more accidents 3) am impossible traffic system to control. Instead of waiting in line in the terminal, you would be waiting on the runway for 2 hours to take off.

Trains are not the answer either, our country is too spread out for it to be feasible, this is not Europe, Japan, or England. Trains are defintely needed in larger cities such as LA, but they cannot come close to replacing the airline system.

This country needs an entirely new method of mass transportation. Figure it out and you will be richer than Gates. Its too bad we didn't spend the 300B on research for teleporters, its probably a lot harder to hijack a teleporter!

http://nationalpriorities.org/auxiliary/interactiv etaxchart/taxchart.html

Maybe he is implying that since Gore likely wouldn't have invaded Iraq, we'd have an extra third of trillion or so in the budget to help out NOLa.
I don't think Democrats are gods gift to my personal freedom, far from it. I only vote for democrats because they are the lesser of two evils. They have in the last 30 years shown themselves to be more financially prudent. They also dont invade third world countries.

If it were up to me all uniformed police would have to wear cameras and mics at all times so we could all watch the watchers. The government would stop spying on it's own people. We would legalize all the silly vices (sex, drugs) and tax them instead. The government would spend hundreds of billions on public transit and getting us off of foreign oil, not on trying to force democracies on countries that crave theocracies.

Most days I just wish we had a parliamentary system ala Iraq or Sweden where smaller parties could actually have a say, as there is no greater personal freedom then castinv a vote that actually counts.

Most people don't understand the background. The U.S. government has been helping oil companies in secret since before 1950, and that has led to an expectation by rich oil investors that the U.S. government will lower the cost of doing business by getting the U.S. taxpayer to pay for security arrangements. The U.S. government secretly, or semi-secretly, breaks the law, kills people, including Arabs and Muslims, and and destroys the property of anyone who stands in the way of oil and other profits. Here is a short summary of the kinds of actions that have caused the U.S. government to be corrupted: History surrounding the U.S. wars with Iraq: Four short stories.

The U.S. government is in dire circumstances. Money is being taken from the people and given to the rich in enormous quantities. See the old article, U.S. Federal Deficit by Political Party. See how much things have gotten worse since then: National Debt. Oil and weapons investors profit: Cost of Iraq War.

See a short review of books and movies about conflict of interest: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

It's far worse than these short references say.

wtf? democrats? blaming democrats for lack of space funding? what a stupid and broad generalisation. maybe if we weren't spending billions on republican wars.

http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm
http://nationalpriorities.org/auxiliary/interactiv etaxchart/taxchart.html
http://www.federalbudget.com/

also, giving up screwing is a stupid thing to ask. birth control is your friend.

"It's science, and exploration, and both are good (imo), but if we want to prioritize, wouldn't billions of dollars be better spent focusing on fixing our own messed up planet?"

Riiiiight... just "think" of the things we could have done with $300 Billion.

But seriously, while I don't necessarily buy the argument of needing to "find other places to live" since short term the odds are far more in favor mutual destruction via bombs or environmental catastrophe than reaching a population critical mass for human life on this particular rock or needing to escape an exploding Sun/Asteroid/Alien invasion, etc...

While most research is done in Universities (not private/corporate/government labs as suggested by a few other posters), there would be a great amount of research conducted via this program, and putting humans back on the moon has a great humanizing effect that most should appreciate. This effect, as it did 37 years ago, spreads accross borders.

IMO, I can't wait to see clear video of man walking on the moon...

Oh yes, that horrible Democratic corruption which stains dresses, makes cigars smell like fish, and relieves the president's pent up tension after working all night to pass a budget after the god-fearing Republicans shut down the government. I forgot to mention that. Thanks for reminding me.

I Miss Monica - Ode to an intern.

<sarcasm>I'm glad to know you Republican ass-holes are still fighting the good fight against consentual blow-jobs. Blow jobs kill a lot more people than senseless wars, and they cost taxpayers much more than $293,646,760,794. I'm glad you have your priorities straight, and that you aren't hipocrits for hold double standards.</sarcasm>

-Don

PS: <truth>Ann Coulter is a MAN, baby! And if you want to fuck her, then you're gay!<truth>

> Take some of those billions we're spending on bombs and spend it on infrastructure

Some numbers on how Iraq spending has been allocated:

Total: $282B
Reconstruction: $21B

i.e., spending on reconstruction represents only 7.4% of US spending on Iraq, and even a quarter of that is security costs.

Now, security is pretty obviously a serious problem in the region and requires serious spending, but it just seems wasteful and inefficient to be spending 1600% as much on security as on actual infrastructure-building. If doubling the reconstruction budget shaved even four months off the time required to stabilize Iraq, it would pay for itself in lower troop costs, to say nothing of the lives saved.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but the relatively low level of reconstruction funding compared to troop funding seems all too much like being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

The human genome project is one of the most monumental projects undertaken and accomplished by mankind in terms of technology, knowledge gained, collaboration, and potential for improving the human condition. It actually allows us to see the genetic blueprint for what makes us, us. Going to the moon is in the same category but precious few other things are in the same league. It was done under budget and ahead of schedule- it cost $2.7 billion (1991 dollars) which adjusted to 2006 would be $4B and was finished 2 years ahead of schedule. The people involved in the effort should be proud of their accomplishment.

As a depressing comparison, consider the $281 billion and counting spent in Iraq so far http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com _wrapper&Itemid=182. It could have gone toward 68 other projects like the human genome project.

So what? Thats what? Just under half a war.

still, if they spent half of what they've spent on this war building a few hydro dams, that cost would go down.

I mean, we are up to almost $315,000,000,000.00 in cost so far. That's in addition to the normal defense spending. The population of the US is about 299 million. So, that's about $1050 per person in the U.S. so far for just war activities. over 3 years, that's about $300 per year or $25 per month. If you took that and put it into your pocket, to offset your excessively high $400.00 monthly power bill, that's a savings of around 7 percent per month. That's for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. Of course, that $400 is probably spread across 4 people (avg) so you're looking at more like a 25% savings. Just on tax dollars spent on the war (waste). Now, if they actually used the money to develop renewable power sources, hydro, solar, etc. that savings would be reflected PERMANENTLY because of the lower cost of producing power vs coal (requires workers, mines, transport of the coal, etc. [and pollutes].)

Of course, this is all obvious. Too bad we can do anything about it because the oil companies control energy right now and they want to rape all the oil first before they move on to other stuff.. "God gave us this oil, and by-god we're going to BURN IT!"

This shows tradeoffs (not sure how accurate it is, but whatever) between defense spending and possible state benefits. Shocking. No, not realy.

How much lower will our resolve to make peace be when the cost to ourselves in a war is insignificant?

Cost? What cost? At the start of the last war we even got a tax break. We put the cost onto our children. Thats the way to fund a war - no pain just cool video clips on the tube.

The current cost of the iraq war is sitting around $270 x 10^9. That is around a $1000 bill for each citizen or about $22,500 per tax payer! I think before the start of any war it should be a law that the cost should be projected and be paid by the current generation in a reasonable time span.

If our illustrious leader presented the case for war along with the very real financial cost and let people know that taxes will increase by $3000 for the next ten years we would have looked a little harder at the "case for the war" and the evidence presented and been a little more pissed to learn it was cooked.

Also keep in mind some citizens and families pay the ultimate price. I think every should share some of the pain and public interest in the performance of those conducting the war would be a little more critical.

(quote, paraphrased) "Whine whine whine about lazy welfare slobs".

How about the lazy ass politicians who wanna be rambo ... except with other people's lives and money?

http://nationalpriorities.org/auxiliary/interactiv etaxchart/taxchart.html

28.5% of your fed tax dollars goes to the military.
18.7% to pay debt, of which about 9% is related to miltary debt.

In other words, the military sops up 37.5% of the money we send to the feds. And for what? A missile defense system that won't ever protect us against a container bomb (and probably not against a missiles either). A war based on falsehoods to drive up the price of oil? (I own energy stocks and I don't mind the dividends -- but it is true, every bit of news about Iran, or hurricanes, or Nigeria, or some other type of instability makes me check my stocks with a bit of guilty glee -- you think Bush and cronies didn't know the war would punch up their dividends and cap. gains? Don't be a retard.)

Housing, nutrition, education, and income security amount to a whopping: 11.3%. It's easy to get pissed at the lazy freeloaders out there, but we should be livid at the active freeloaders, e.g., the Fucking Federal Government.

Cost of war in Iraq: 245.727 billion
NASA's 2006 Budget: 16.656 billion

Glad to see my government has no problems blowing 14 years worth of operating expenses on something that by all appearances will never have a positive outcome, while letting vital programs for all of earth collapse.