Last week President Bush announced he was seeking an additional $25 billion for the war effort in Iraq. This is money he is seeking so we can continue what appears to be an effort to send troops over there for Iraqi militants to use as target practice for their crudely made roadside bombs.
Let's face it. $25 billion is a lot of money, even if you're Bill Gates. It seems like way too much to put in the kitty just to keep the status quo. As always, though, I have a better idea.
What if you took that money and just divided it up between all the Iraqi citizens? According to a population estimate by the CIA there are roughly 26.7 million men, women, and children in Iraq. Probably less now because of all the bombings, but close enough for this discussion. If you divvied up $25 billion between them, you could pay everyone $936.33, cash on the barrelhead. Or towelhead.
I would have to think in a country like Iraq at this point that $936 is a lot of money. You could probably put up an office building with that kind of money and still have enough left over to hire your 73 virgins as secretaries or administrative assistants or whatever. Although life in an office cubicle can suck at times, it's still got to be better than blowing yourself up in what passes for a shopping mall over there. Besides, if you plan it right you can have air conditioning in the office, which will relieve a lot of the day-to-day tension many Iraqi citizens no doubt feel because of the oppressive heat.
Seems to me that this would be a much better way of spending $25 billion in Iraq. The one challenge will be making sure that the money actually gets to the people, and not just into the government's coffers the way it does when the U.N. gets involved. Maybe you give everybody a Christmas Club account the way banks used to do here in the U.S. so they could sucker little kids into giving them their money without having to pay interest. (Individually those accounts weren't much. But if you got 1,000 kids to throw $50 apiece in, that's $50,000 in free money the bank could then invest into companies dumping dangerous products into third world markets at a high profit level. That's good business!) In any case, everyone would have to come in personally and sign for their money; maybe we could have Jane Fonda hand it out since she likes to get involved in stuff like this, and she's kind of a bitch so no one would mess with her.
Give it some thought, people. You know I'm right!
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2 comments:
Perhaps the money could be dropped from helicopters in big boxes that splinter on contact with the rocky ground -- as was the case when food, medicine and other somewhat fragile materials were provided to suffering Kurds in 1991?
That's one way our government could take a good idea and ruin it, which is SOP.
Or maybe, instead of spreading it evenly they can give everyone a chance to grab as much money as they can in one of those clear boxes where the money blows around, like you see at shopping malls now and then. Then everyone there will have the chance to see what it's like to be a government official in a third world country.
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