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I got bored while waiting for some computer jobs to finish. This is the result of my boredom:
What if Obama had spent the $880 billion in stimulus money on something REALLY focused on "Hope and Change?"
Like?
What if he had spent the whole thing on building nuclear power plants?
Use the power of his office to plow through the endless red-tape in getting plants built. Cite national security interests if needs be - securing natural resources, lowering greenhouse gases, making us less dependent on Saudi oil, less funding for terrorists with Saudi oil money, etc. Build them primarily to make us less dependent on foreign fuel and to cut CO2 emissions.
What impact would it have had?
First of all - WAY more jobs than he "created" with the stimulus he chose. Second, a whole slew of new clean energy. Each new plant would take about 5,000 people X 5 years to build (according to this article: http://www.stockmarketsreview.com/news/36091/).
The Numbers:
First, this is the distribution of how the US generates its electrical power:
( I can't find the exact source I used - I know oil usage varies dramatically with price - but this one is close: http://www.p360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=603 )
Source Amount
Nuclear: 19.9%
Coal: 45.9%
Natl Gas: 21.8%
Hydro: 6.8%
Oil: 4.6%
Other: 1.0%
The US currently has 64 nuclear powerplants running 105 reactors that supply 19.9% of the electrical energy of the country (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_N..._are_in_the_US).
$880 billion is enough to build ~135 single reactor plants (if the red-tape costs could be cut (right now they are virtually infinite), it would cost ~$6.5 billion to build such a plant.). That means over 675,000 jobs for the next 5 years, building something that is actually USEFUL - but it doesn't pay off the government employees unions or the AFL/CIO, so... well, you know...
On top of the 675,000 new jobs building the plants, construction jobs have a large "multiplier" - every new construction job requires a few other new jobs to support that worker - new construction materials, plus new goods and services for the workers themselves. For construction jobs, the multiplier ranges between ~2.06 (http://community.seattletimes.nwsour...g=timeswatch23) and about 2.40 (http://www.bea.gov/scb/pdf/regional/...meth/rims2.pdf). That means that the 675,000 jobs actually building the power plants, will result in approximately 1.4 - 1.6 million ADDITIONAL jobs supporting these jobs. That means 2 - 2 1/4 MILLION jobs. This would've had a MUCH bigger effect than how most of the stimulus was spent - sending money to states and municipalities to bail them out from having to cut governement employee (and teachers) jobs.
Construction multipliers are among the biggest out there because there is stuff that needs to be bought. Saving a teacher's or bureaucrat's job doesn't ripple through an economy like actually building stuff. But again - all that Obama and the Dems were trying to build with The Stimulus was a voting base. And government employees and autoworkers were the most favored targets for the spending...
Giving the country 240 nuclear reactors generating electricity instead of 105 would increase output from nuclear by 130%. That means that with new nukes, we could produce 46% of our power needs from nuclear instead of just20% (France produces over 80% of its energy from nukes - something along those lines should be our goal). That means we could literally shut down ALL the gas and oil fired power stations in the US and not affect our electical supply. Or, if coal is what you hate, we could eliminate about 44% of all coal buring power plants.
Regardless of which kinds of plants you choose to shut down, if CO2 is your target (as it would be for many - and it would've been a great selling point for such a plan), the resulting reduction is about the same regardless of fossil fuel source. In newer plants, coal, oil & gas all produce about the same CO2 per electrical output (coal puts out a bit more in total greenhouse emissions - some unburned methane, etc). But it's close enough to being the same that we'll just assume it to be so.
Currently (2008) the US generates about 72% of its electricity from fossil fuels, and creates about 2,400 million metric tons of CO2 per year ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/electricity/p...t/co2emiss.pdf ) as a result. If we could add 26% of our total power production from nuclear, and reduce that 26% directly from carbon generating fuel sources, we could lower our carbon emissions by 867 million metric tons (that's 1.9 TRILLION pounds) of CO2 (math: 72%/26% = 2400/X, X=867 million metric tons saved * 2,200 pound per metric ton = 1.9 trillion pounds of CO2).
The average automobile in the US generates about 15,000 pounds of CO2 per year (15000 miles driven, @18 mpg, and 18 pounds of CO2 per gallon of gasoline burned) (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_CO2_do_cars_release).
By spending the stimulus on nuclear power plants instead of whatever it is we spent it on, we could have reduced CO2 emissions by the equivalent of removing 127 MILLION cars (with American cars' size and American's driving habits) from the road. - that's equivalent of removing roughly 85% of all the passenger cars in the US today (about 150 million registered cars and about 240 million total registered motor vehicles). It's also a little more than 20% of all the passenger cars that exist in the world (about 600 million) ( http://www.worldometers.info/cars/ ) .
This is just one example of why there should have been more discussion about 1) whether we needed a stimulus, and 2) how we should have spent it.
And an example of why I usually run big computer jobs overnight...
What if Obama had spent the $880 billion in stimulus money on something REALLY focused on "Hope and Change?"
Like?
What if he had spent the whole thing on building nuclear power plants?
Use the power of his office to plow through the endless red-tape in getting plants built. Cite national security interests if needs be - securing natural resources, lowering greenhouse gases, making us less dependent on Saudi oil, less funding for terrorists with Saudi oil money, etc. Build them primarily to make us less dependent on foreign fuel and to cut CO2 emissions.
What impact would it have had?
First of all - WAY more jobs than he "created" with the stimulus he chose. Second, a whole slew of new clean energy. Each new plant would take about 5,000 people X 5 years to build (according to this article: http://www.stockmarketsreview.com/news/36091/).
The Numbers:
First, this is the distribution of how the US generates its electrical power:
( I can't find the exact source I used - I know oil usage varies dramatically with price - but this one is close: http://www.p360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=603 )
Source Amount
Nuclear: 19.9%
Coal: 45.9%
Natl Gas: 21.8%
Hydro: 6.8%
Oil: 4.6%
Other: 1.0%
The US currently has 64 nuclear powerplants running 105 reactors that supply 19.9% of the electrical energy of the country (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_N..._are_in_the_US).
$880 billion is enough to build ~135 single reactor plants (if the red-tape costs could be cut (right now they are virtually infinite), it would cost ~$6.5 billion to build such a plant.). That means over 675,000 jobs for the next 5 years, building something that is actually USEFUL - but it doesn't pay off the government employees unions or the AFL/CIO, so... well, you know...
On top of the 675,000 new jobs building the plants, construction jobs have a large "multiplier" - every new construction job requires a few other new jobs to support that worker - new construction materials, plus new goods and services for the workers themselves. For construction jobs, the multiplier ranges between ~2.06 (http://community.seattletimes.nwsour...g=timeswatch23) and about 2.40 (http://www.bea.gov/scb/pdf/regional/...meth/rims2.pdf). That means that the 675,000 jobs actually building the power plants, will result in approximately 1.4 - 1.6 million ADDITIONAL jobs supporting these jobs. That means 2 - 2 1/4 MILLION jobs. This would've had a MUCH bigger effect than how most of the stimulus was spent - sending money to states and municipalities to bail them out from having to cut governement employee (and teachers) jobs.
Construction multipliers are among the biggest out there because there is stuff that needs to be bought. Saving a teacher's or bureaucrat's job doesn't ripple through an economy like actually building stuff. But again - all that Obama and the Dems were trying to build with The Stimulus was a voting base. And government employees and autoworkers were the most favored targets for the spending...
Giving the country 240 nuclear reactors generating electricity instead of 105 would increase output from nuclear by 130%. That means that with new nukes, we could produce 46% of our power needs from nuclear instead of just20% (France produces over 80% of its energy from nukes - something along those lines should be our goal). That means we could literally shut down ALL the gas and oil fired power stations in the US and not affect our electical supply. Or, if coal is what you hate, we could eliminate about 44% of all coal buring power plants.
Regardless of which kinds of plants you choose to shut down, if CO2 is your target (as it would be for many - and it would've been a great selling point for such a plan), the resulting reduction is about the same regardless of fossil fuel source. In newer plants, coal, oil & gas all produce about the same CO2 per electrical output (coal puts out a bit more in total greenhouse emissions - some unburned methane, etc). But it's close enough to being the same that we'll just assume it to be so.
Currently (2008) the US generates about 72% of its electricity from fossil fuels, and creates about 2,400 million metric tons of CO2 per year ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/electricity/p...t/co2emiss.pdf ) as a result. If we could add 26% of our total power production from nuclear, and reduce that 26% directly from carbon generating fuel sources, we could lower our carbon emissions by 867 million metric tons (that's 1.9 TRILLION pounds) of CO2 (math: 72%/26% = 2400/X, X=867 million metric tons saved * 2,200 pound per metric ton = 1.9 trillion pounds of CO2).
The average automobile in the US generates about 15,000 pounds of CO2 per year (15000 miles driven, @18 mpg, and 18 pounds of CO2 per gallon of gasoline burned) (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_CO2_do_cars_release).
By spending the stimulus on nuclear power plants instead of whatever it is we spent it on, we could have reduced CO2 emissions by the equivalent of removing 127 MILLION cars (with American cars' size and American's driving habits) from the road. - that's equivalent of removing roughly 85% of all the passenger cars in the US today (about 150 million registered cars and about 240 million total registered motor vehicles). It's also a little more than 20% of all the passenger cars that exist in the world (about 600 million) ( http://www.worldometers.info/cars/ ) .
This is just one example of why there should have been more discussion about 1) whether we needed a stimulus, and 2) how we should have spent it.
And an example of why I usually run big computer jobs overnight...
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