POLL: To what high purpose would you put $100 billion?

[doublehelix]

Forty years after we put men on the moon, we still can't cure cancer. Bad Medicine columnist Christopher Wanjek explains why.

http://www.livescience.com/health/09071 ... -cure.html

[redbert]

As an experiment, I would take all the money and fund one of the worst school districts in the country ( ex Camden, NJ)

New buildings , new books, PCs, top notch teachers, , guarantee to pay for college or trade school for graduates., etc..

And when the students still have one on the worst failure or drop out rates in the country we can finally end the folly of throwing money at every problem.

Until students AND parents have a culture that values education , no amount of money will make a difference.

[Gregory975]

I voted for all, I didn't want to be selfish and leave out the hungry. If we can get people to the moon, we should be able to feed everyone first. My favorite idea though is to find alternative energy quickly. The sooner we lower carbon emmissions and other byproducts into the air, the healthier we will be. I would be in favor of an "Apollo" program to get us off of all dirty forms of energy. As we have progressed in our liberties, I see that we are at a point to add a few liberties that all human should possibly have. Everyone has a right to clean, healthy water and food. Everyone should be able to get the healthcare they need. How far this goes...? Is electricity a right, the internet? as technology progresses, these might become more embedded into our nature and become basic rights.

[Aaronc]

As I expected, the poll had a very narrow number of choices.

1. Feeding hungry people, despite making us feel good, would be a complete waste of money, unless we addressed the reasons that people were going hungry, and used the money to create sustainable programs. Otherwise, the money would get used up and the problem would still be with us.
2. Attempting to "cure cancer" would by ok, but I would rather focus on the current top killer of people in the US worldwide, which is cardio-vascular diseases. I would invest the money in bonds and securities, and only use the income to fund research.
3. Sending humans to the moon is a stunt that's been done. You don't get nearly as much glory for being the 100th person to climb everest as you do being the first. It's a simple concept, but NASA and others act like they don't get it. A Mars landing is the Moon landing of the 21st century. I would put $100 billion toward a direct approach. Of course a continued moon presence is important, including establishing a permanent moon base. But I'm talking about getting the most bang for your buck.
4. Renewable energy research and development, therefore, is the only really logical choice left. Of course, it has to be done properly too. It has to be done strategically, using well-researched, well-thought out designs that are appropriate for particular regions. I think that many present systems are not as well designed as they could be, by a long shot. So the focus should be on things like conservation, where we can make the biggest impact for the least money.

[SilverJaiden]

it's ony $100 BILLION. all of these programs get more than that annually. the government is practically throwing hundreds of billions out the window and one more hundred billion won't help at all.... I'd definitely fund a futuristic, ignorance-seeking ninja cyborg assassin and let her (she'd be hott of course) run loose through all countries, europe first. It'd be protecting the evolutionary gene-pool!

[Blackcloud161]

I would like to have seen give it to me.
I chose the energy one just becasue the rest seemed stupid.
Feed the hungry... I was once one of them for a long time untill I got a job.. problem fixed.
go to the moon? WTF for so we can Hi-def footage of ppl bouncing around? nothing has changed in 40+ years.
Cure cancer? Sorry to sound mean but we all have to die sometime.
I still think they should just use it to create more jobs... have the homeless pick up trash... mow lawns etc.. put illeagals to work for the next 12 years harvesting crops (below min wage) and the like, after 12yrs of good service grant citizenship to them... ooo write an operating system that is intel based and has no bugs and works more than 50% of the and time that is open source. Sell it for 50.00 and watch the $$$$ roll in! ROI yesss that is what we need here...

[Aaronc]

Jaiden:
No, none of these programs get $100 bilion annually now. Only a hundred billion? My my. I think your ninja migh have to kill you first. The "throwing money at the problem" objection has always just been an excuse for lazy thinkers to justify doing nothing. If one specific approach failed in the past that doesn't prove that no other program in the future will ever work.
Blackcloud: Your health is the most important thing you've got and it's not only old people who get cancer. I would have picked this, but I don't know that $100 billion is enough. $100 billion in renewable energy would help give us more financial stabiity so that perhaps we could fund some of these other programs. Just changing the building codes for new homes and offices to make them better insulated or include things like passive solar would save massive amounts of money that are presently being sent out of the country and into the bank accounts of some Saudi prince. Things change, so we can't just keep doing what we always did in the past. We have to create new jobs in new industries. It's like in business where they often find that 30-40% of sales come from products that were just developed in the last 5 years. You gotta keep moving forward. Imagine what can happen if you largely let things stagnate for a decade or so like our recently former president did, for example. You get a massive recession. Big surprise.

[Courteney]

I thought all of these are pretty poor choices they give us. I would never choose "to feed the hungery" because there is a reason why we can't feed everyone...TO BIG OF A POPULTION. Nature tries to find ways to balance everything out and not being able to feed everybody is proof that there are just too many people. Also, I would never choose "cure cancer" for the same reason. Nature is trying to find ways to balance use out because are numbers are just huge and the number one weapon nature has always used against anything and everything that gets too densily populated is disease. Plus, it's something that we are practically doing to our selves with all of our chemicals, processed foods, and plastic everything. I won't even address "go to the moon" option...that's just stupid. I would like us to try and find a renewable energy resource but I don't think that is the final answer to our problems. As you can probably tell, I think that our main problem is that there are just way too many people on Earth. If we cut our population down by 50% that would solve so many problems. We have so much more land for food growth, for animals to survive to restore the food chain properly...there would enough food for everyone. We would have 50% less pollution, 50% less natural resources used...the list goes on and on. But even then I would want to find renewable energy resources.

And I'm not one of those people who preaches and then doesn't practice what I say. My husband and I have decided not to have children because there are just so many people. And we both know that if we ever changed on mind on not having children, that there is no way we would ever have more than one child, because it just isn't right. People who have more than two children are selfish, and we just wouldn't be able to do that.

[SilverJaiden]

I was making the point that all of these programs has consumed much more than a $100 billion and they still won't be solved for years on end. Every one of them has eaten over a hundred billion and still persist as a major problem. The people that posed the question should raise the amount, it's not a scientific question anyway. The government has thrown much more than a Hundred Billion at starvation and the only thing they've gotten for it are more starving people than they started with. The "throwing money" at the problem argument isn't lazy..., it's the exact opposite, USA pays significantly more money per student in public education than any other country on the planet and we are rated much lower in education than MANY countries that pay less than half of what we pay. It's not money that's needed, it's better ideas, plans, and EFFORT, no matter how much money you put into an awful plan, it won't get any less awful. The lazy thinkers just don't wanna put the EFFORT to think of the different ways to solve the problem so they say "put more money into" and forget about it until it gets sooo bad that they are forced to actually think! So what do they do.... they throw trillions into health care, billions into welfare, billions into education. And guess what, every last one of those are worse than when we started trying to help! So you know what they're planning to do now.... PUT BILLIONS AND TRILLIONS MORE MONEY INTO THEM.... what's the definition of insanity, again?....

and as for when i said "only $100 Billion"....., this is your words Aaronc : "Blackcloud: Your health is the most important thing you've got and it's not only old people who get cancer. I would have picked this, but I don't know that $100 billion is enough." And you're right, it's not nearly enough. It'll take much more than $100 billion to do everything we want to do on the moon!! More to cure all of the many different types of cancers!!

I would probably help cancer over the others, but since $100 billion isn't goin to help, i'll just create my hott, futuristic, ignorance-seeking ninja cyborg assassin..... hmmmm, where do I send her... where do you stay again, Aaronc?

[SilverJaiden]

Oh, and we won't create jobs by supporting new fuel sources because those new fuel sources will terminate the jobs the older fuel sources already had. Don't get me wrong, I'm with you on the point that we need new fuel sources thats more efficient and less contraversial, but there will be no extra jobs made in the deal, it'll just balance out, some will lose jobs while the others will gain, that's that.

And while I'm not a Republican or Democrat, this recession had nothing to do with Bush. This recession started outside of Washington politics as a whole and while there were a very small amount of people I saw predict the recession itself, they were way off of where it started from. They predicted the collapse of the dollar because of the boom we had before the recession, not the housing market and excessive bank loans, not until the problem already gotten out of hand. There was no stagnation, our economy was making record highs all across the board before the recession which caused banks to feel safe and give out loans that they never would have given otherwise. They economy is just like your health, it'll go up then down then up. You don't blame someone for getting sick, it happens and will happen again. Recessions are expected and occur at regular intervals every few decades. Of course, he didn't help with his stimulus, or obama's stimulus, and no stimulus will help.

[rowdyaz]

Ithink we should stop feeding other countries for once until we can get back on our own two feet.

[Vikkers777]

"I was raised to believe health is wealth; thought the hungry choice or cancer cure choice would get the most money; I was surprised to see the alternative energy choice has the most votes thus far. It could be the other choices are moot if we don't have a healthy planet to live on; my choice (cure for cancers) is a bit prejudiced as a close family member died recently from ovarian cancer. Not an easy way to go out."