But we're not done yet. Let's recruit some progressive companies. Get them involved in this project and have them negotiate with localities, just as Amazon did, getting the localities to come up with funds or financing given in exchange for bringing new business to the area. Get the companies to bring in, altogether, $520 million in concessions. Then have those companies give the blue immigrants jobs. This will be attractive to localities because the new workers will spend money in local businesses and pay local taxes. Get the blue businesses to pay the health care costs and half the moving costs and salary for the blue immigrants. The businesses get a great deal and that cuts the costs of the 37,500 couples to $30,000 and from $3 billion to $1.125 billion. Apply that to option 2 group and that cost could drop from $1.5 billion to $600 million.
That brings the cost down to $2.6 billion, or about $15,800 per person. Think of it in political terms. That would be about $260 million per senate seat and throw in governors for free But it should be permanent and could lead to elimination of gerrymandering and taking control of state houses and winning of some, perhaps even many more US congressional seats. Spread the cost over 20 years and we're looking at an annual cost per senator of $13 million. Some senate races raise twice that much. And since this is not a direct political donation, there are no limits on how much donors can give.
Those are numbers that it is realistic to hope to raise from billionaires and other donors. Even better, it can be done in steps, starting with the lower cost projects. In option one. This is not a plan that will happen overnight, but it's doable--a lot easier than sending people to Mars. And time is on our side. Young people are voting more blue, so it will get easier to do and could make this a model that could work elsewhere to.
This is a first pass at playing with this idea. And I'm not the first. What do you think?
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