Option #11: Use the $19.25 billion GIC Interest per year to - build new highways and thousands of jobs, more government revenue, pay off debt

By Jason Carlson of Bonneyville, Canada

It costs approx 63,000 to replace one mile of an already existing highway with recycled pavement. As best I could figure out there are 41,000 miles of interstate highways in the US. This means we could replace every interstate highway for 2.583 billion dollars, leaving us 16.667 billion dollars left in the first year alone, probably enough to replace a good number of the remaining paved secondary highways in the US. Seeing a new highway needs very little maintainance for approxiamately 5 years, this would leave 4 of every 5 years of interest earnings untouched. With this they could easily replace any paved road in every town and city.
What are the benefits of replacing every paved road in the US every 5 years? First and formost is this will create thousands of jobs reducing the rediculously high unemployment rates. Less unemployment, the less demand on social services and we know crime will also go down thus governments save money in these areas. Currently the government gives grants and or funding to aid municipalities in road repair so this would no longer be a needed expense so the money saved here can be used elsewhere. Municipalities must also generate their own revenue from taxes to cover the costs of road maintenance and it is often the larger part of their budget. This means municipalities could seriously reduce property taxes and/or use the money to build better communities (better policing services, better rec centers, more community events, etc). Also with the additional employed people the governments receive more revenue from income tax. The increased government revenues could start to pay off the trillion dollars of debt the US has without having to increase taxes further.

GIC Calculation:: A one year GIC at Ingdirect is currently paying 3.85% interest. If the 500,000,000,000 dollars was put into one of these GICs it would of generated 19.25 billion dollars just in interest in one year. So lets assume interest rates are holding (but we know they are going up), we could repeatedly reinvest the principle each year and just spend the yearly 19.25 billion interest earned.