Less Stimulating Than Hoped?

Filed in archive General on October 2, 2008

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Image# 4489297

Kara McGuire had a brief blog post the other day about the economic stimulus payments the guvmint handed out earlier this year, and though her post is mainly about how to get yours if you haven't already, I was more interested in her opening paragraph:

Remember the economic stimulus check you received earlier this year? Barely! It feels like a long time ago since I fretted over whether to buy a flat screen TV or save the money. We bought grocery gift cards with $1200, which we're still using, and frittered away the other $600, probably spending part of it on the new front door we purchased this summer.

It was nice to get the extra cash, but did the stimulus checks really do the job?

Good question. As we sit today in the midst of this economic bailout situation in which we are told that failing to use $700 billion to buy up bad loans is going to sink the economy of the U.S. and, by association, much of the world, it's easy to forget the "stimulus" that was supposed to do just the opposite - jumpstart the economy. Call me crazy, but the country doesn't seem stimulated.

By the way, I wanted to see how much money each person in the country would get if the $700 billion was divided up among us, instead of going to bail out the big dummies. First, I had to see if I knew how to write out $700 billion. I think it is:

$700,000,000,000

That's a lot of zeros. Using this census clock, I got a U.S. population figure of 305,316,348. (It's already gone up since then, but you gotta choose a figure if you're going to do the math.)

So $700,000,000,000 divided by 305,316,348 = $2292.70. That's over $2000 per person, so if you're a family of 4, you could be getting an extra $9200 in your pocket instead of in AIG's (for example).

Many of us would be willing to take the bet that an extra $9000 for our family would be better spent than buying up bad mortgages with it. I thought we were an "ownership society" now. How about letting the finance companies own their bad decisions, and we'll take back ownership of the $700 billion. Who's with me?