I’m sitting here, stunned by the amount of money that is about to be casually taken out of the U.S. Treasury to “save” the economy. I’m highly suspicious. I’m not sure this taxpayer revenue is needed or that it is any more than a band-aid. Surely, Wall Street (or other businesses) will be back in three months for yet another “emergency” handout. Why assume otherwise? Corporations have almost complete control of Congress. Why assume that we are getting any responsible information at all. This reminds me of Colin Powell’s infamous talk to the U.N. It amounts to “BOO! Give us lots of money or something terrible might happen.”
This “bailout” is welfare for big corporations who really had it coming because they acted recklessly–they acted treasonously . Unfortunately, Congress became so sated with all of those campaign contributions over the years that reflexively deregulated the big financial firms to the point where the biggest firms became too big to fail. If they failed, they (as the story goes) would take down the entire U.S. economy with them. Hence, my use of the word treasonously.
But what about those mind-choking numbers? $700 Billion to “bail out” [1]the failing financial firms?
If we’re going to have a meaningful discussion, we need to discuss that money in terms that make sense to the average American. Here’s my suggestion. Let’s talk about this immense amount of money in terms of how much this “bailout” will cost per typical American family. There are about 303,000,000 Americans [2] out there. Divide 700B by 303M and you get $2,300 per person. But the average American family is 3.14 people. [3] Therefore, the average American family will be paying $7,200 for this “bailout.”
If this bailout were really needed and if we did responsible accounting rather than printing more money to dilute the value of the dollar, the government would send each family a bill for $7,200 to “save the irresponsible Wall Street big shots” and then the revolution would rightfully begin . . .
Oh, and BTW. What else COULD we do with $700 Billion? How about this: Build enough solar energy equipment to make the entire U.S. energy independent. In fact, we could make the U.S. energy independent using solar power for only $400 billion [4] (with a lot left over for cost overruns) and this is not a crazy dream. This is a real life plan, endorsed by the editors of Scientific American. It’s a plan for doing what many politicians only talk about: “By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions.” [5]
If we only had the will, the discipline and the intelligence to do what we should be doing. Instead, we are allowing the U.S. continue on its slide toward 3rd world status.
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