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Old 02-03-2014, 02:47 PM   #25 (permalink)
Xist
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank Lee View Post
The title says "saving the world" but we're only talking about the U.S. Which is it?
There is a world outside of America?

Frank Lee, tell me how to theoretically save the world for this quantity of currency, in a fashion that will earn me an "A" for my assignment, and we will save the world by committee. The fact that this is for a grade changes nearly everything, but if this were not an assignment, then there would not be any point of discussing this, because I will never have $100 billion.

Honestly, I think that the best point shared thus far has been one posited by a vulgar comedian: There will always be hungry people if they live where they cannot grow enough food. Thanks Redneck. I think the second-best point was also his, my statistic is misleading and useless because it asked if they were worried about food. So, we do not know how many actually go hungry, while people in this country not only throw away enough food to feed everybody, but they eat enough to feed everybody!

If I actually had the money, could I solve this problem? Can I pretend that I can for the assignment? Honestly, I do not know that curing domestic hunger would benefit anyone outside of this country, although people in this country have a very poor track record for trying to help other countries.

Can we discuss my most recent idea? Five billion a year or so for science fairs. How many states do we have? Oh, how do you divide 5,000 million by fifty?!

An average of $100,000,000 per state for scholarships, which we would not be paying out for a few years, and then only if they attend college. I was honestly thinking that the top prize would be full tuition for two years at a community college and two more at a state university. That would be $25,000 in Arizona. $100 million divided by $25,000? Four thousand scholarships per state?

How about ten and we spend 99.75% of the money in other countries? I do not think the science fair approach would work universally, there must be places where people are too poor and undereducated for that. So, we fund schools? They are still going hungry, getting sick, etc.

How much overhead would there be on the science fair idea? Actually, if it is a science fair, then shouldn't we try to get tech companies to put up displays? Show them exciting stuff that scientists are doing now. Then take 4.9 billion and find some desolate villages and using as much local labor as possible, give them a clean water source, vaccines, make sure they can grow their own food, support the local schools, and provide scholarships for the best students.