'Hey, It Will Only Cost $7 Billion To Build A Storm Surge Barrier For New York - Whaddya Say?'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/columns/ransquawk/11114/hey-it-will-only-cost-7-billion-to-build-a-storm-surge-barrier-for-new-york-whaddya-say--11114.html


'Hey, It Will Only Cost $7 Billion To Build A Storm Surge Barrier For New York - Whaddya Say?'
Mon 8:14 am


'Hey, It Will Only Cost $7 Billion To Build A Storm Surge Barrier For New York - Whaddya Say?' - My thanks to a reader for this topical article by Henry Blodget (would you believe?) and Rob Wile for Business Insider. Here is the opening, written in New Yorkese:

One of the tragedies of our budget crisis is that the amount we spend on on stuff that helps everyone - infrastructure - continues to decline to make room for our ballooning entitlement spending.

And the deficit has become so politicized that any time anyone proposes spending a bit more on infrastructure - and putting more Americans back to work in the process - members of one of our two political teams freak out.

~snip~

To put that $7 billion in perspective, its significantly less than the $12 billion price tag on one of our new aircraft carriers, the U.S.S. Gerald Ford.



unhappycamper comment: Just cancel one Virginia-class submarine (~$7 billion) and that Storm Surge Barrier is paid for. Cancel the USS Gerald R. Ford and you will not incur $30 ~ $40 billion dollars on the credit card. Get out of Afghanistan and you will not incur $100 billion dollars a year on the credit card. Cancel the F-35 program and you will not incur $1.5 trillion dollars of debt.

There's plenty of money out there; it's just being spent in all the wrong places.

[EC]

1. Well, is that cheaper than moving everybody and everything out? ... n/t