Dear Donald,
Not to waste time dreaming up new pejorative nicknames, let’s get right to the point. I have been reading up on the cost of school lunches provided by the federal government to students who would otherwise go hungry at the noon break. There are many good reasons for us to be willing to increase the national debt by borrowing the money needed to pay for them. They will pay for themselves many times over in healthier future citizens, up to the task of creating the wealth that will produce the taxes that will be needed to repay the debt in future generations. I need not belabor the point, since your superior intellect will have anticipated my un-genius-likecomments.
The numbers are as follows:
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Number of school children receiving lunches this year – 30 million.
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Average cost of each lunch – $2.70.
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Number of school days in a year – (Mandated) – 180.
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Cost per student per year, therefore – 180 times $2.70 = $486. (Can we use a rounded figure of $500 to keep the math simple?)
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This produces a total annual cost of the federal lunch program of 30 million times $500 = $15 billion.
Cost for building the Great Mexican Wall –
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According to your accountants at the Department of Health and Human Services – $21.6 billion.
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According to several advisory committees made up of architects, builders, and contractors consulted by various House committees – from $50 to $70 billion, depending on what sort of wall and the conditions encountered “as we go along”. (Note that this does NOT include the political cost — damage to your base votes of the backlash from landowners whose acreage would be preempted by eminent domain and among ordinary citizens who do not see the need to allocate the back-bending strawberry-picking, vegetable-harvesting, and luxury-resort-bed-making jobs now being happily done by Mexican workers, many if not most of them “illegals”.) Can we use the figure of $50 billion, the low end of their estimates, keeping in mind the records of cost-overruns on similar large infrastructure projects of the past (Star Wars?) and the inclination of ideologically motivated politicians to minimize projected expenditures on undertakings conveniently located in their districts? Not to speak of the Mafia-type leeches in the construction industry eager to take advantage of the many kickback opportunities in such a large project.)
My conclusion –
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$50 billion would pay for the entire federal school lunch program for over three years, far more likely to justify our adding that to the growing national debt and more likely to benefit actual American citizens and Make America Great Again.
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I like strawberries, also fresh vegetables and wrinkle-free beds. This is a boat I would just as soon not rock.
Question: –
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Which program would you rather be given credit for on the Pearly Gate registration form Saint Peter’s clerk will hand you as you apply for entry? (In thinking about this, please DO take into consideration whatever respiratory problems Ivanka and Jared’s children and their offspring may develop as our air gets more difficult to breathe, and our need for as many alert, smart scientists as we can educate to figure out coping methods when the friendly temperate zone we are used to becomes desert or uninhabitable flood plain.)
Please send your reply to me at <vanceweaver23@gmail.com> Asap.
Thank you.
Vance Weaver 