What, precisely, is his overall message?<p>"We could spend five billion dollars on aid that civilises East Timor and ten billion dollars buying up Indonesia's forests and a billion buying eighty Elvises over three years and the cost per week per taxpayer would be nine dollars fifty, the price of an hour's parking or two Toblerones."<p>Yea, and there is an unlimited number of other things we could pay for if everyone sacrificed their two Toblerones.  How do you choose?  Why East Timor and Indonesia, specifically?  Are there other nations that need that aid even more?  Are we sure that there are not even more cost effective ways to spend that money to save lives?<p>Should we all give up our Toblerones and all our other luxuries until deprivation, preventable death, and want have been eliminated everywhere on Earth?  Has the author taken this step himself?<p>I suppose he makes a good argument that the funds spent in the name of battling "Terror" made for a poor investment.  With the bankers, I agree with his sentiment of the injustice of it all, but does he stop to think even for a moment whether things might be even worse if the world financial system were allowed to collapse just to spite the bankers who caused it?  Was there a solution that both would avoid this situation and appropriately punish the bankers who got us in to this mess?  Has the author run any numbers to determine this, since he is so fond of sums?<p>His overall message seems to be that the solution of humanities ills are simple, and it is only the refusal of a few powerful Americans to do their sums correctly that prevent the implementation of these solutions.  Forgive me if I suspect the reality might be more complex than that.