[ExI] What a trillion can buy? (was: Religion and banking)

[Tomasz Rola]

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010, Tomasz Rola wrote:

> BTW, I keep wondering, what can be bought for a trillion? I am rather 

Obviously, I wasn't first. There was even someone having idea of proposing 
a indecent proposition to a milion women (ye, right, I was too busy 
watching Demi Moore to notice a milion bucks was there, too). But there 
were also other proposal, even more indecent, like:

- a one-year cd yelding $15.5 billion in interest

- buying 59-million army of privatees for a year (after that they could be 
payed from looting, I guess)

[ 
http://kiplinger.com/features/archives/ways-to-spend-one-trillion-dollar-deficit.html
]

And totally decadent proposals include:

- "Basic education for all: $6 billion"

- "Water and sanitation for all: $9 billion"

- "Reproductive health for all women: $12 billion"

- "Basic health and nutrition for all: $13 billion"

I understand those money is for covering needs of only those, who cannot 
afford it by any other way, not those who are poor but somehow manage. 
Amounts seem to be microscopic in comparison to the big sum.

Definitely insane:

- 1 million Asimo Robots

- "With a trillion dollars you could own and operate your own space 
program with an annual budget of $20 billion for the next 50 years.  
That's $2 billion more than NASA spends each year."

[ 
http://www.cosmoloan.com/money-management/what-can-you-buy-with-a-trillion-dollars.html
]

And, in 2011 they plan to build yet another fastest supercomputer in the 
world. The building cost is 208 millions, and housing it costs 72 
millions (a year, hopefully). So, with a trillion, one can

[15]> ((lambda (num) (/ (+ (* 208.0 million num) (* 10 72 million num)) 
trillion)) 1000)
0.928

one can build a thousand such supercomps and house them all for ten 
years... Fsck me in the arse... Actually they would have funds for one 
extra year, for, hohum, finishing their projects... Or for paying the 
crew.

[ 
http://www.dailyillini.com/news/campus/2009/12/08/new-supercomputer-to-bring-academic-benefits-as-well-as-multimillion-price-ta
]

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **