Stimulus Ideas

Simple Stuff: From Homes and Gardens to Bandwidth

"The more bike lanes are available, the more people will feel comfortable riding their bikes, and the more the lanes will be used. Perhaps a good way to decide where to build more bike lanes is within two or three miles of schools." - Meredith O

"Let's invest in agriculture—not agribusiness, but in a Michael Pollan [author of The Omnivore's Dilemma] vision of sustainable agriculture. Get people growing their own food again. Victory Gardens provided 40% of America's food by the end of World War II. Let's figure out how to involve people in growing their own food again." - Tim O'Reilly

"Work from home. How about incentivizing companies that create 'hot desking,' so people could come into the office—but are not wasting space with a dedicated cubicle? Perhaps free high-bandwidth Wi-Fi everywhere? - Karen Auby

"Spend the money on sex ed and creating easier access to contraception and reproductive health care." - Albert Kaufman

"Broadband everywhere. Roads and bridges will only do what they do now: get us somewhere. Building them will employ [only] those who build them. Bringing ubiquitous (and wireless) broadband will also spur new businesses, new innovation, better education, more global competitiveness, more jobs, more wealth." - Jeff Jarvis, author, What Would Google Do?

"A grant should be given to [Stanford law professor] Larry Lessig for his anticorruption organization, change-congress.org. I worry that too much of this stimulus will be wasted." - Sam Whitmore

"Start a civilian conservation corps to make insulation out of recycled newspaper with flame retardant and pump it into uninsulated homes for free, regardless of income. Pump it into old apartment buildings, they need it most. That will create green jobs." - Squeezebox

FROM THE EXPERTS

"An average house costs $7,000 to retrofit. This includes insulation, windows, patching leaks, upgrading heating systems. This work...provides an average reduction of 34% energy consumption in hot and cold climates—a bit less in temperate ones.

The [retrofitting] industry could double in short order, adding more than 200,000 jobs nationwide. A lot of people who have lost jobs in building and construction are well-suited to this work. They can be up and running after eight weeks of training. The housing downturn is a good source of labor." - Steve Cowell, CEO, Conservation Services Group

"More parks and playgrounds where children can go to play—safely—and experience nature. Excessive development has eroded open-park space, and children of all classes, but especially the poor, are suffering from what people are calling 'nature deficit disorder.' Particularly urban kids. This 'infrastructure' project would also provide jobs—gardeners, park rangers, security people." - Alvin F. Poussaint, Psychiatry Professor, Harvard Medical School; Director, Media Center, Judge Baker Children's Center

"High-speed, above-ground rail links from [New York City airports] to the vicinity of Grand Central Terminal. Not only would this create jobs in construction. It would reduce congestion on the roads. And it would make New York an even more attractive destination for out-of-town visitors—not least professors from Massachusetts. - Niall Ferguson, History Professor, Harvard University; Author, The Ascent of Money

"Faster, more efficient, more affordable high-speed railways. The idea would be to connect major metropolitan areas in the Northeast, city centers, and airports in the Midwest, and large sprawling communities in the far West using super-efficient trains—trains made from new materials using emerging technologies. This would dramatically lower our daily energy consumption, reduce our commute times, and stimulate both the economy and productivity." - Subra Suresh, Dean of the School of Engineering, MIT

Urgently Needed: Defense Against Cyberattacks

"Protect cyber-infrastructure. Our country's most critical systems, both private and public, are networked and vulnerable to cyberattack by an increasingly sophisticated array of malware. The next Administration must dedicate sufficient money to fund a serious, dedicated, time-critical effort to research, design, and implement a solution.

"The current global financial crisis will provide unprecedented opportunities for cybercriminals or spies to exploit the turmoil caused by the crisis and the resulting institutional mergers, acquisitions, and collapses.

"My recommendation would be to keep cumbersome federal programs out of it. Let the new national chief technology officer create a private-sector fund similar to the CIA's venture arm In-Q-Tel that operates like Y-Combinator (fast and lean) in terms of how it evaluates proposals." - Jeffrey Carr

FROM THE EXPERTS

"The U.S. is vulnerable to cyberattacks that could disrupt our electrical grid, banking system, pipelines of oil and gas, and telecom. In short, an attack could drop our economy from first world to something much closer to hunting and gathering. It will cost from $30 billion to $50 billion, take five years, and employ tens of thousands of engineers and scientists." - O. Sami Saydjari, CEO, Cyber Defense Agency, former DARPA official

Visions for the Future: All the Way to Mars

"Cap consumer interest at 4%. That would mean all mortgages, credit cards, department store cards, etc. This could go on until the stock market hits 15,000 and oil is still below $50 per barrel." - Eloyj

"Trans Global Highway. It would contain roads, railroads, water, oil, and gas pipes, as well as electric and communication cables. It would mean vastly lower-cost and faster shipping and better allocation of resources." - Dave from New York

"Solar energy from photovoltaic paint. Buy the paint for every government building and help get the tech better and cheaper." - Kawika Holbrook

FROM THE EXPERTS

"An Apollo-type project to send humans to Mars within eight years. It could be done for $40 billion. The Kennedy moon program stimulated the economy and doubled the number of science graduates we had in the 1960s. It created intellectual capital that we're still benefiting from today. The 12-year-old science geek in the 1960s became the 40-year-old techno geek who helped create Silicon Valley and the genetic engineering that's creating crop yields to feed the world. Going to Mars—to see if life as it exists on earth is a pattern for the universe—would create jobs and lift the morale of the nation. Ultimately, our wealth is our intellectual capital." - Robert Zubrin, CEO, Pioneer Astronautics; President, Mars Society

To suggest your own ideas for the Obama stimulus package or to see more proposals from reader, visit the Vox Stimuli blog.

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