The Cost of the Bailout in Terms People Can Relate To

November 17th, 2008

The Cost of the Bailout in Terms People Can Relate To

It appears that I underestimated the cost of the bailout in my previous post. Today, CNBC reported that the cost stands at $4.28 trillion. That is more than the total inflation adjusted cost of all of WWII. Here are some numbers to put that in perspective:

There are just over 300,000,000 people currently living in the entire United States, so the cost of the bailout equates to a little less than $14,266 per US resident (man, woman, and child).

The market cap of Google and Microsoft combined is less than $300 billion. As a result, the government could have bought all of both companies 14 times over and still have cash to spare.

The cost of a top-tier college education is approaching $50,000 per year. That means the government could have sent at least 21,400,000 students to four year universities for free.

The outstanding balances on all of the credit cards in the entire country is $962 billion as of May 2008. So the government could pay off every credit card in the country more than 4 times over.

Barack Obama’s universal health care plan would cost only $1 trillion over the next decade. So, we could ensure people are insured well into the foreseeable future.

When Clinton left office, his staff took flack for causing damage to government property for taking the “w” keys off of keyboards. It seems like the Bush administration will not be satisfied until they have bankrupted the entire country.

ePolitical.org