How much will taxpayers shoulder?

[Kevin]

Why is 7 trillion being used? The amount of the bailout is 700 billion. That would put the correct value at $4700 per working person, or $2350 per capita, in ballpark terms. Very, very substantial, but not backbreaking.

Because I hadn't paid that much attention to it either and was copying his numbers to try and find the error and made an error of my own. I might have been thinking of the total national deficit. Of course that is actually 10 trillion so that must not be it. I might have been thinking of something I was doing at work at the time. Who knows. I used a wrong number but at least I made it clear that it was wrong. :)



Of course the numbers are so stupidly huge at this point I lose scope on them. With the big 3 automakers asking for what? $45 billion for themselves as well it all just swallows me up. Of course this is why I like to work with numbers this big in exponential notation. 7x10^11 that is bailout.


This all of course reminds me of a Richard Feynman quote.

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge
number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the
national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now
we should call them economical numbers." -- Richard Feynman

Of course MEAT already caught my error in correcting his error. But my error is because the numbers are so damn big that I stop paying attention. I'm a horrible citizen, I know. But you can't take this number in isolation, like you said. You can't ignore the 10 trillion that this country already owes for stuff like this anyway. I haven't looked at the details but this bailout looks like it will be paid like a lot of other government payouts. It will be debt we owe ourselves, like much of the national deficit already is. The effects of the national deficit are part of what is currently showing and it will get worse the weaker the dollar gets.


Now I'm not saying that preventing the economy from tanking completely is a bad thing, but none of this can be taken in isolation.

Anyway, the nitpicking was valuable and the numbers are fixed and they are still pretty nuts. If you just consider that it takes most Americans 30 or so years to pay off a 100K loan. Many take 5-10 years for a 10-20K loan. 2300 to 2400 per person is pretty significant. I'm currently working 2 jobs, both of which require me to have a college degree, and that still takes me a month to make if I spend nothing else. Of course this is why I'm still looking for another job. :)