What’s the Bill for the Bailout?
I just read an article that, while it may be from a skewed news source (there’s a particular news channel and online news outlet that is particularly partisan on the side of the GOP, ehem), is pretty staggering when they put the bailout terms into perspective, as far as how much it’s really going to cost each American family or household in the long run.
When the bailout is all said and done, which will not be for several months now after the tallies are all done, it is said that the total payout to troubled banks, car makers, and other financial institutions, including the bailout package which includes everything from infrastructure investments to Americorp recruiting for volunteer workers and other social programs, supposedly the tab will be at an estimated 9 trillion dollars.
That’s right, I said trillion. To put this into perspective, and again I’m not taking accountability for these figures because I don’t know how accurate they are, supposedly each American household’s bill for this massive undertaking will be about seventy nine thousand dollars – that’s right, in numbers now that’s $79,000, or thereabouts. That’s a staggering number. I had to laugh when I remembered back to a funny email I got.
It was one of those “we’re americans and we’re pissed” emails that I get and usually tend to ignore since it’s usually just someone puffing on about illegal aliens taking our jobs, and it’s usually started by someone who’s just mad that they can’t get a job. This gem was about the similar topic of how much this bailout is going to cost American households, and how it would be better if the government just took that same money and divided it amongst these households as a sort of bonus. Yeah, like, here you go, just for being an American, here’s close to eighty grand, now do your job and go out and spend it and revive the economy.
That’s all well and good, however, that’s the reason that people who start emails like this aren’t in charge of economics. It would still be artificially stimulating the economy. It’s money, coming from nowhere, and who’s to say that we’d do the right things with it anyways? I know, I sound really pessimistic, but who does know exactly what will work in a situation like this? We’re all human, and unfortunately we don’t have some super computer to figure this one out for us, we have humans in charge of the country, and we just have to hope they’re making the best judgement calls they can so we can get back on track with minimal pain.
