Thursday, September 25, 2008

$700 Billion...

I'm not so sure how I feel about Congress saying yes to the expensive rescue of these big corporations. That's a lot of money. I wonder if these financial institutions deserve to be bailed out. I know there are a lot of "little people" that would be affected by their downfall but it's hard to get past companies where the CEO makes more in a year than I'll ever see in my lifetime.

And I have trust issues. Do I trust that the money will be used as it's intended? They say it will be paid back. Will it actually be paid back (with interest?) and the funds put back to where they were intended to go in the first place? Where is this money coming from anyway?

Let's put this into perspective. According to the Census Bureau, the population of the United States as of today (8:09pm CST) is 305,256,510 people. If you divide up that $700 billion, each person in the US would get $2,293 plus some change.

Each person could buy themselves a new 60 inch LCD television. That would be a huge luxury for most people. Many people could take that money and buy themselves a decent car to get to and from work. Others could pay off a debt that's hanging over their head. In a sense, they could bail themselves out.

Let's take this to a larger scale. According to the same website above, there are 6,726,013,183 people in the world. Each person would get a tad bit over $104. That would pay my light bill for a month, groceries for a week for my family, a few new outfits for my boys, or just a wonderful dinner out with my husband (I work hard, I deserve that occasionally).

Daddeee came up with a wonderful idea. Instead of issuing that $700 billion to the Secretary of State, why not divide it up between all citizens of the US and let each individual person decide if they want to donate their $2, 293+ dollars to these companies or keep it to bail their own family out of whatever crisis they're experiencing? I think I'd keep my chunk of change and deal with my own issues. I know that's being selfish but I don't see anyone stepping up to help me anytime I'm in a crisis.

Or even better, with that kind of moolah, why not, literally, buy the world a Coke? That would be a good start towards world peace.

1 comment:

Tracey said...

I can see your point...but having a husband who is employed by one of these companies who may possibly lose his job because of it...I would rather him have a job than my 2somethingK! :)