Do the Math

For anyone that reads my blog, you'll know that I primarily write about FIRST Robotics Competition. Avid readers will also know that I occasionally get side-tracked, which is what I am right now.

Everyone knows that this is "politics season", and I promise I will not blog about politics. But one thing is being said over and over again, we (the United States) are spending 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq. No matter how you feel about the war, that is a lot of dough. So I got to thinking...

One thing that is always said in FIRST is "That's why we do the math", and I can to do simple math, so I gave it a whirl.

I started wondering how many new jobs could be created with that kind of money. Take a wild guess at how many really good jobs 10 billion dollars a month could sustain. 10,000?, 50,000? 500,000? Nope, over 1.5 million! At a salary of $80,000 / year! AND Uncle Sam would be collecting taxes on that too!

That could be 1.5 million new jobs searching for ways to sever our dependence on foreign oil. These could be high-tech jobs in energy, robotics, medicine; solving the major problems that we are facing today.

FIRST is all about solving problems.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that some of the 10 billion is benefiting the United States. We're paying companies here at home to make guns, tanks, trucks, etc... We are also funding companies such as Haliburton and Blackwater (maybe not anymore, I'm not sure). My point is, the money is not being spent to solve our energy problems, but on war to make sure we get the oil we depend on. One day, the oil will run out, I promise.

One of my favorite quotes:
"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them."
-Albert Einstein

More about FIRST next time.