Making Our Way
Journeys shape us, change our viewpoints, disturb our assumptions, and enrich our awareness of places both common and exotic. Join Jan, Rob, Dee, and Jim on a weekly journal of where we’ve been, how our perspectives have grown, and what may lay beyond the next bend in the road. Our dogs might join in, too, so grab a cup of coffee for an armchair journey around the world of travel, food, culture, and friends.
Making Our Way
$200 Billion?
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Episode 89 - $200 Billion?
Official transcript: https://www.cheynemusic.com/transcripts
Hosts.: Jan, Rob, Dee, & Jim
Jan brings a question, some answers, and receipts. “What are some other ways that we as a nation could use the $200 billion proposed Pentagon expenditure on the war on Iran?” What other benefits might that money bring to the country?
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JIM (voice-over): Jan brought an idea to the table today. What would we do with $200 billion? I went first and said I’d buy a yacht, a super yacht, one of those James Bond villain yachts, with all the gadgets and with whatever munitions might be necessary. And a helipad. I want it to have a helipad.
Then Rob went next. He said he’d invest in a fully electric, luxury RV that runs on simple tap water, 1200 mile range on 10 gallons with no emissions, plus a private permanently reserved RV parking spot just for him in every National Park and every KOA in the US and Canada. Oh, and he wanted it to have a helipad.
Dee went next and said she’d open free medical clinics around the world for underprivileged children. And then Rob and I said, “Sure, we meant first open the free medical clinics and then get the luxury RV and yacht. That’s what we meant in that order.”
Then Jan said she meant how else could the US spend $200 billion other than attacking Iran? And yes, this would be the perfect time for The Three Amigos theme music, but that costs too much, so here’s our opening theme instead.
JIM: This is a question for Jan.
JAN: Okay, I’m ready.
JIM: Franklin High School.
JAN: 1972. Yes.
JIM: The class of ‘72. Do you remember who the chair of the math department was?
JAN: No one but you remembers this.
JIM: I didn’t remember either. I looked it up. His name was Jim Carey.
JAN: Oh my gosh.
JIM: James Carey. James Carey once said to our math class, “If you had a billion dollars, let’s say, here’s the deal. I’ll give you a billion dollars in one dollar bills. All you have to do is count it.” And he said, “There’s no way you would be able to do that in a lifetime.” So we challenged him on that. If you counted one bill every second, 24 hours a day, it would take you 31 years and some. If you spent 16 hours a day, 47 and a half years. Eight hours a day of doing nothing but every second counting a bill: 95 years, which is incredible.
ROB: Yeah.
JAN: Gosh.
JIM: So $200 billion. Was that Pete Hegseth that wanted that?
JAN: Yes, that was.
JIM: Okay. Did he lay out why he needed that much? Did he lay out anything?
JAN: He said that uh because of Biden we have given too much to Ukraine and depleted our sources. That is not true.
ROB: That is not true.
JAN: So he says that’s what they need to invest in this war with Iran, that’s not a war, that’s a excursion.
JIM: Is it weaponry? Is it, uh…
JAN: I don’t think they were that specific.
DEE: No, they want to put in ground troops and in order to put in ground troops that’s what they need.
JIM: For the whole support of that?
DEE: Mm-hmm.
JIM: Okay.
JAN: I looked up to see what the actual annual budget is, what the 2026 budget was for Pentagon, and it’s one trillion. So this would be an additional 20% of that budget that they’re asking for.
ROB: What the Biden administration did was they gave Ukraine outdated or surplus ammunition and arms that they were ready to replace.
JAN: Yeah.
ROB: And that was the whole idea of it.
JAN: Thank you for that memory.
ROB: Yeah.
JAN: I forgot that. We’re in an insane time, and I question every day our priorities in this country. But that request hit a nerve because of the quantity of money and what it’s going for.
ROB: What would you do with two hundred billion dollars?
JIM: Just, before we get to that, what you’re saying is, Pete Hegseth was being dishonest. Is that right?
DEE: No!
JIM: Or he was mistaken, or he has the same intelligence briefings that the president gets who doesn’t know…
ROB : That’s right.
DEE: He doesn’t read his briefings.
JIM: Oh, okay. All right. Well, you see, I don’t want to just come down on the guy. I don’t want to take a bad picture of him, is what I’m trying to say. If, you know, I want him to look the best all the time, which is why the photographers were banned from taking picture of his briefings.
ROB: Hey, did you see the Supreme Court said that was - he can’t do that.
JAN: I did.
DEE: Can’t do what?
ROB: He can’t keep the press out.
DEE: Oh, is that what - was it Kagan who wrote the…
ROB: I don’t know.
DEE: …decision? I saw something about Ka-… I think it was Kagan…
ROB: Might be. I don’t remember who it was.
DEE: …having written the majority..
ROB: It wasn’t…
DEE: …decision.
ROB: It wasn’t the Supreme Court. Sorry. It was a judge.
JAN: No.
DEE: Oh.
ROB: Sorry. It was a judge that said that’s unconstitutional. You can’t you can’t…
DEE: Right.
ROB: …you can’t decide what press you have and what you don’t.
JAN: There’s this First Amendment problem.
DEE: Yeah, no, that was Kagan. The Supreme Court did weigh in because I saw some - Kagan wrote the majority…
JAN: On that?
DEE: …decision and it had to do with the First Amendment
ROB: This was just a - a federal judge that I heard, so…
DEE: Okay, well it must have gone to…
ROB: There’s lots of them out there right now.
DEE: Yeah, yeah, there are.
JIM: But, uh, back to your question, Rob. What could we do with two hundred billion dollars?
JAN: This was such an amazing thing that I have to acknowledge where I got the idea. I listened to a podcast called Pod Save America. These are brilliant guys. They all worked for, um, the Obama administration. Very bright, um, intuitive people. And they did this analysis of what you could do with $200 billion if you didn’t send it to the Pentagon. This is the line I got when I was searching it up. “According to various economic and policy think tanks, redirecting that sum could fundamentally reshape American social and and physical infrastructure.”
DEE: Mm-Hmm.
JAN: And then they gave a breakdown of some of the ways it could be spent, which honestly blew my mind because most of us have no idea how much $200 billion really is, or how much certain things that the government helps with cost. So here’s one. We could end homelessness for 20 billion dollars, so for 200 billion we could end it for ten years. That was stunning to me. We could provide universal pre-K, high quality universal pre-K, for every four-year-old. At a cost of $25 billion a year, we could do that for eight years. I’m picking my favorites right now. We could provide free school lunches for every US student. That’s at a cost of $12 billion a year, so we can do that for 16 years.
JIM: Right now, what do we have in Pasco County with lunches?
DEE: It’s no longer free for everyone. It was last year.
JIM: We also, when we were at Calusa, they had the blue backpack. This is where kids would be sent home for the weekend with food, because they would not be getting food at home.
DEE: Mm-hmm.
JIM: One side of the spectrum will say, “That’s negligent parenthood.” The other side will say. “These parents are living in their cars, and they’re still sending their kids to school. Bravo on them. How can we help?” And so that was, I mean, talking about starving kids, and so they need these things.
DEE: Well I remember at my school one year that, um, Jill, who used to organize all this and know the families, she would get these last minute cases for, like, Thanksgiving because they would put together hampers for the families that needed it. At one point I was able able to reach out to - was it Pasco Salvation Army?
JAN: Mm-Hmm.
DEE: I know - was it Monica was there or…
JAN: Mm-Hmm.
DEE: …something? ’Cause I got Jill connected with them and they were able to partner. But there was a family, the mom was raising the kids, and she worked at a 7-eleven, and she was gonna be working Christmas Day, and she didn’t know what she was gonna do. And so I went out, I got our team - the Special Areas team [Art, Music, P.E.] - to put money together, and we were able to put together, um, go to Publix and order through Publix dinner that all she had to do was pick it up and take it home. And with our team we were able to get food to help them through the - the break period.
JIM: So how much would that cost?
JAN: For lunches pre-K No, I’m sorry. Free school lunches would be 12 billion - for all students - $12 billion a year. So then we could do it for 16 years with that $200 billion.
JIM: Wow.
JAN: It’s a lot.
ROB: Yeah.
JAN: A lot that we can do.
DEE: You know, going back to when you said the homeless people?
JAN: Yeah.
DEE: It…
JAN: Yeah.
DEE: …it would be enough time and support for those people to get on their feet and be independent.
JAN: Yeah.
DEE: You know what I mean? So it’s not like they would then after the ten years, “Oh, what are we gonna do now?” No, that would give - that would be the tools they needed to survive.
JAN: Yeah.
DEE: Anyway. Yeah.
JAN: This was a good one, too. Um. Looking again, impact on education. So the categories that this looks at are housing, health care, education, nutrition, environment, family support, and health care. Uh, I might have already said healthcare, because it’s on here twice. Sorry. Um, we could provide, at the cost of $15 billion a year, free community college for all students nationwide. So we could do that for 13 years, free, across the country.
DEE: Mm-Hmm.
JAN: Community college, as we know, is a huge tool for educating many people…
ROB: Yup.
JAN: …who can’t or don’t - who can’t afford or don’t qualify for a four-year institution. It - it’s that basic next step. And, you know, there are countries that do provide that. I like this one. You know the most recent debate over whether we were gonna continue to provide, um, tax credits for the AC - for the uh…
JIM: Affordable Care Act.
JAN: Thank you! So, we could provide those credits for one year for thirty billion dollars. So we could lower health care insurance costs for families for over six years using that $200 billion. Learning these numbers helped me put that $200 billion in perspective. I already have issue on a moral level - ethical level - was spending that kind of money on the Pentagon for an incursion that’s not…
DEE: It’s not necessary.
JAN: …it’s not been approved by Congress, you know…
DEE: Yeah.
JAN: …for which we still don’t know the goal Here’s one more. This is about the environment, which has taken a major, major hit during this administration. $40 billion could be used to transition to clean energy. So over five years of funding we can create one million clean energy jobs.
DEE: For me, as you’re saying all these things, these are all excellent ideas. And the question is, why won’t we do it? And the - the conclusion I’ve come to, it’s corporations that say, “We don’t want you to do this ’cause we’re going to lose money,” or, “We want you to do this instead because we’ll make money,” and they pressure the politicians to vote the way corporations want them to go.
JAN: I think we don’t do this because we don’t value these things. At least enough to invest in them.
DEE: Mm-Hmm.
JAN: This has been the move in education for a while now, to defund education.
DEE: Well, my understanding is because corporations want to privatize education, because they think it’s a potential money-making avenue.
JAN: Could be.
DEE: I mean…
JAN: Yeah, I’m not saying it’s not.
DEE: Yeah. No.
JAN: All I’m saying is if we valued these things, we would invest in them.
DEE: Right.
JAN: Because it’s back to that whole - I remember in, uh, sermons where [laughs] in church settings where people say, you know, “Where does your money go?”
DEE: Mm-Hmm.
JAN: Because it is expresses your value system. Uh. How much of it goes to what types of things? And I think that’s the case of our country also. I did an interesting search. I don’t know if you saw that, um, Finland was just, again, determined to be the top world’s happiest country, for the 9th year in a row, something like that. And you look at the reasoning behind that. What are the things they have that make them considered in that category? One was high institutional trust; one was robust safety net - social safety net; one was personal freedom and autonomy,; and one was proximity to nature. And I thought… Oh, the fifth one was a good one, managing our - their expectations. But when you look at the United States, these have all been eroded. All - our trust in institutions is eroded, our safety net has been eroded, our freedom has been eroded, and, uh, we’re eating up our nature right now by development. So it’s all those things that made them happy, we’re in the reverse place right now in the United States. And, uh, we don’t fare well in the world’s happiest countries report.
DEE: Mm-Hmm.
JAN: Finland…
ROB: That’s true, yeah.
JAN: …Iceland, Denmark, Costa Rica, Sweden. Those are the top five
JIM: Which one of those does not belong with the others?
ROB: Yeah, that’s exactly what I said.
JAN: That’s right. Costa Rica is living a good life down there.
ROB: Costa Rica. Wow!
JAN: Anyway, we’re choosing where we spend our money, and it expre… - and it I think is a measure of our value system and right now, for me, it’s upside down. So.
JIM: Yeah.
JAN: The study - it’s called the World Happiness Report. And it gives reasons for. And so United States, the reasons are: the youth happiness gap. The young people are not happy people. They’re not hopeful people. Such a very different than when I was their age, when it was all the future was the possibility. That’s not true anymore. A second is the heavy social media use. Americans average 2. 5 hours a day as a primary driver for the decline in youth happiness in English-speaking countries like the US and Canada. We’ve lost our social trust. We’re polarized. We are increasingly isolated and lonely.
DEE: Yeah, because of the devices.
JAN: Yeah. So that the reasons given for this year, uh wanting to see the big picture of why Finland continues. Uh. What - how different are they than us and they’re fundamentally different…
DEE: Mn-Hmm.
JAN: …in what they value. So.
ROB: Let’s build two hundred of the best schools in the world. Two hundred billion dollars? You know, I just looked it up, and an average high school - not an average high school, but a state-of-the-art high school - cost about five million dollars to build.
DEE: Oh, wow.
ROB: We could build four in each state.
JIM: Is that all?
ROB: Yeah. Five million.
DEE: Mm-hmm.
ROB: And, um, and we’d still have money left over to to raise teacher salaries.
DEE: Mm-hmm.
ROB: Get better people in the classrooms. But that has to be a priority.
JAN: Yeah.
ROB: And that - and in Finland it is.
JAN: Well, this is the…
ROB: And by the way, Finland has very strong teachers unions. I just gotta say that.
DEE: Yeah.
ROB: I just gotta say that. What would the Right do with $200 billion? I don’t see any investment.
DEE: No.
ROB: I see them tearing apart. I see them breaking down.
JAN: Well here…
ROB: But I don’t see them investing…
JAN: What they would do is send everybody a check.
DEE: Yeah, send everybody a check.
JAN: The is the - I’m telling you.
ROB: That’s - okay.
JAN: I know that’s not the solution.
ROB: We’ll believe it when we see it.
JAN: You ask what we they would do.
ROB: Yeah.
JAN: Okay? What they would do…
DEE: That is what they would do.
JAN: is bribe the individual person.
ROB: Okay.
JAN: With this money now. So that - instead of investing in the future.
DEE: And they would time it to work out with the next election.
JAN: That’s been the MO. “I’ll send you a check.”
ROB: Okay. I - I’m just saying you presented lots of ways to spend money that could make us stronger as a nation…
DEE: Mm-Hmm.
ROB: …and I don’t hear anything coming from the other side…
DEE: No.
ROB: …about making us stronger nation.
DEE: No.
ROB: It’s about tearing things down, making, you know, getting rid of of rules and regulations. Downsizing everything. And giving more money to the rich.
DEE: Yeah.
ROB: I don’t…
DEE: I think it’s about society’s values. What is important? Right now, what seems to be important to our country, to our society - because we’re talking about money and what could be done with it - and right now, this country, or this administration, is pushing to put $200 billion into a war that the majority of the country does not want.
JAN: Well, and I think the what I was - what brought me to what I did today with the money was, here’s where somebody’s asking that we spend a whole lot of money. What else could we do with that money that might be a better investment in our lives here in the United States? And here are all these things that I think would be at least worth looking at for where we could put that money, assuming we had an extra $200 billion, which by the way we don’t, but that’s another problem. Where could we invest this money - to make our future and the future of our children - where could we put that money to make our lives here better?
ROB: And in the process raise our happiness index.
JAN: This is the thing…
ROB: The data is correct.
JAN: …we are very…
ROB: That would do it, you know?
JAN: …you know, self-focused in the United States to a max. And we don’t - you can go back to any of our travel conversations about the value of going other places and seeing how other people live, which has taught me a lot. So I look at other countries, and they’re actually living happy lives. They pay a good amount of taxes, and for those taxes they get all these services. They don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen when they’re 85 and disabled, like could happen to any of us.
DEE: Right.
JAN: How are we going to be able to afford our care? If you live in a country like Finland, that will be taken care of. That worry - the lack of that worry…
DEE: Mm-Hmm.
JAN: …is what adds to the happiness.
DEE: Yeah.
JAN: So I look at investment in things that make all of our lives better.
ROB: Mm-Hmm.
JAN: But when the rubber meets the road, they want the fire truck to show up at their house…
DEE: Yeah.
JAN: …you know? So I think there’s a good argument for why we all - unless you’ve got a billion dollars on your own - have to care about the network of resources we have at our disposal and for our care.
[Music]
JIM (voice-over): A quick ad here for upcoming episodes. We’ll take a closer look at Luke’s gospel and how Luke’s view of Jesus differs from those other guys. I’ve read it dozens of times, but I found something I hadn’t seen before. Then we sit down with Linda and Bill Himes. We’ve known Bill since he was a kid at Music Camp, and Linda since she was a high school student of Rob’s dad. Bill is a prolific storyteller, as we all know, but I promise you’ll hear tales that even Bill hasn’t shared yet. That’s for future episodes. For now, let’s return to our $200 billion question.
[Music ends]
JIM: So a Jane Goodall question. What gives you hope? I’m looking for the, uh, elections this year because I have a feeling that the, um, stranglehold on the Congress will go away. That gives me some hope that we can have an actual Republican Party again that we can have conversation with. That’s my - that’s where I’m putting my hope right now is that these things will change.
ROB: I have hope in the courts. They have stood against so much of what he’s tried and I just think they’re gonna they’re gonna prevail in the end. I know, the Supreme Court has been wishy-washy, but, uh, you know, the lower courts, they’re stopping him, or telling him he can’t do it.
JAN: I - I don’t hold out hope unless the Congress changes. The only hope is an election that changes Congress…
DEE: Right.
JAN: …and that is right now a tipping point. If the SAVE Act is passed, we’re in trouble. Women are in trouble, uh, especially. Their ability to vote. Um. But they’re not the only ones. So…
DEE: I mean, is that really close enough that that could pass? Are - do you have people in Congress that are gonna allow that to pass?
JAN: Dee, I can’t answer that.
DEE: Okay.
JAN: I used to think I know those kind of things I don’t anymore.
DEE: I mean this seems like a fringe idea.
JAN: It’s not. But here’s the thing that may save it from passing is that there are Republicans that understand that they have a lot of rural people voting. And it’ll be people in rural areas that have the hardest time getting the documentation they need to prove that they’re citizens.
DEE: Mm-Hmm.
JAN: So I think there’s Republican uncomfortableness about the SAVE Act.
DEE: Right.
JAN: I don’t know what they’re saying out loud, but I think that they recognize they’re from areas that could be hurt. Currently, what’s ironic is, currently it’s - traditionally it’s been that Democrats um benefited from high voter turnout.
DEE: Yeah.
JAN: That’s not true anymore.
DEE: Right.
JAN: So if something happens to affect voter turnout negatively, which the SAVE Act will do, it could hurt Republicans. And that may be the card that gets played. I have serious concern about our elections, to be honest. It’s one of the things I’m most concerned about. Um. So I’m hoping that what would happen is the fall elections are soon enough that not as much damage can be done before those elections.
DEE: Right.
JAN: So that at least the House shifts.
DEE: Mm-Hmm.
JAN: The Senate may, too.
DEE: Mm-Hmm.
JIM: So, there’s proposed two hundred billion dollars to put towards this Iran war. And what we’ve decided to do is take a look at this argument. “Well, if we don’t have money for all of these other issues that are facing us right now - for health care, for clean water, for all of the things that you could say, ‘Oh, we don’t have money for that, but we have money for this’” - we’re saying, “Well what are some of the things that we could use this $200 billion for?” - setting aside for the moment, “Do we have $200 billion that we could do this with?” If the answer is we do have two hundred billion dollars to put towards this war, then we do have the two hundred billion dollars that we need for all these things that are we’ve been told we don’t have money for. And so we’ve outlined some of those things. Just review, it has do with health care, it has to do with child lunches, it has to do with education. All of these things that we could do to invest in our future could be benefited by two hundred billion dollars. And so that’s been our discussion today is: if we do have the money Then let’s put it for things that really are going to affect us as a nation. If we don’t have the money, then let’s not spend it on the war that has not yet been officially declared or approved. Would that be a clear…
DEE: Yeah.
JIM: …enough sort of…
JAN: That’s very good. Yeah.
JIM: …that’s what we’re saying?
[Music]
JIM (voice-over): In other words, all that is needed in a country like ours, with resources like ours, is good people who will prioritize those efforts that directly benefit everyone. How great would that be? And yes, Dee, we would have enough to provide those free medical clinics for children, and make sure each one has a helipad for emergencies.
Thank you for joining us today as we’ve been Making Our Way.
Until next time.
[Music ends]