Comments on: A Better Way to Spend $85 Billion!

By: Divakar Rao

Divakar Rao — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 06:39:26 +0000

I think the plan makes some sense, if properly implemented by the government. Better the citizens be aware fully of the plan details and they must be stimulated to spend the bail out money as quicly as possible to create the aggregate demand to pull the economy from the present recession. At the same time, the spending has to look into how much productive activity is getting newly created to boost up jobs on one hand and built the capital structure on the other for future sustainability.

By: cho33

cho33 — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:17:28 +0000

wow, this letter has gone all over the internet and it’s totally wrong on the math. It’s $425 a person. I wish people would check things before they send it to everyone they know. The math part reminds me of how the banks must have been calculating, too.

By: samjones2

samjones2 — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:31:54 +0000

I got this email today, and quickly responded to the person sending it to me. It’s good that people aren’t falling for it, although it’s bad to see that people do fall for it enough to blog it.

I understand that you have trouble with the math, and it’s a good thing you can admit that you are wrong, I applaud you for that.

Next time though, follow your own instinct – Too good to be true = Is.

I would feel really bad if I were this guy, and I sent this out to as many people have seen it now.

(By the way for those that don’t know, he added THREE Zeroes to the number he used, dividing his 200,000,000 people by $85 TRILLION)

I’m glad that you posted this though, so other people can see how blatantly wrong that guy was, and won’t start thinking it’s a good idea.

(—Wonders if maybe this is why Bush thought the $600 per citizen plan would actually do anything.)

By: anneshaw

anneshaw — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 02:27:33 +0000

Oh, this is nonsense. The American government does not have the money to bail anyone out of dodge. The federal economy is $50 trillion in the red. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JI26Dj03.html

By: pa9979

pa9979 — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:13:25 +0000

You don’t have to be a genius to do the math. The geniuses at Google do it for you. Just type it in the search box and voila. But anyway, Mr. Birkenmeier is the one who should be shamed. But I do agree with his principle. He simply should have added all of the bailouts (before the big, upcoming one) together. That would have given him enough money to do some real good ($200B Fannie & Freddie, $29B Bear Stearns loan, $85B AIG = $314B. Considering every federal bailout prior to 2008 (and in 2008 dollars) cost a TOTAL of $347B… wait… WTF?!?

By: gatakitty

gatakitty — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:31:54 +0000

Now for my reply:

Oops. I never said I could do the math–I don’t pretend to be able to. The last math class I took was Algebra II in the 10th grade. (Journalism degrees only had a 5-hour math requirement in my day, which–solely by the grace of God–I managed to CLEP.) The only thing I learned in that class was “Don’t try to understand it–just do what the teacher says and more often than not, you’ll get it right.” I escaped with a solid B that I was more than happy to get. Thank God Hubby is an engineer, else my kids would be alone and adrift when needing help with their math homework. I help with the music, grammar and composition, he helps with the math and Spanish, and we both chip in with history and science.

That being said, I did state that I would yield the floor to those who could actually do the math. I’m glad y’all stepped up!

By: gatakitty

gatakitty — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:23:50 +0000

ry0ukidding sent me a reply with an ugly bit of name calling attached (which is patently against the rules set by me before I wrote my first post). Still, he brings up a valid point, which I have quoted below.

“Do the math. 85 billion dollars divided by 200 million people works out to 425 bucks, not $425K.

You can wish in one hand and spit in the other – see which one fills up first… -OR- If it sounds too good to be true, guess what?

This lack of attention to details (and this is a BIG detail) is what allows corporations to pillage the taxpayers while the taxpayers being pillaged rant to no avail on blogs devoid of critical thought.”

By: billyjfish

billyjfish — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:23:11 +0000

Sounds great the only problem is his math is way off. That comes to $425.00 a person. Thank god he’s not running our counrty.

By: grampysbooks

grampysbooks — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:07:15 +0000

The math on this doesn’t quite work out as I see it. To split up $85,000,000,000 I arrive at 200,000,000 people at $425.00 per person, not $425,000.00
.
If you took the currently proposed bailout of $700 billion, that would work out to only $3,500 per person. This person has just, in my mind, disqualified himself from providing any input into the problem. The government figures for the current taxpaying units arrive at a cost of $7,000.00 per. This would mean that we have approximately 100,000,000 tax paying units in the country. To arrive at a figure of $425,000.00 per is to actually declare that he is not smarter than a fifth grader!

That said, I am against the bailout and think that they should just let these as*****s go down in flames. I would rather see the government spend that money in a new deal type program building and repairing roads, bridges and mass transit etc. We should also use some of the money to invest in green technologies etc. That would be a far more productive use of the money in the long run and the people of the US would benefit.