What would $700 billion buy?

For starters, it could repair all our bridges and schools and have $483 billion left over

This article was published on 10.02.08

It’s hard to wrap one’s head around $700 billion, the amount the Bush administration wants to spend bailing out Wall Street capitalists. We know it’s more than what is currently allocated for the Iraq war and occupation, but what are some other comparisons we could make? The National Priorities Project, a research organization that analyzes and clarifies federal data so people can understand how their tax dollars are spent, found that for the same amount of money taxpayers could secure any of the following:

• 51.6 million people with health care for four years

• 181 million homes with renewable energy for four years

• 2.9 million elementary school teachers for four years

• 27 million four-year scholarships for university students

• repair all of our nation’s 77,000 deteriorating bridges with $519 billion left over

• rebuild all our nation’s 33,000 deteriorating schools and still have $664 billion to spend

Source: National Priorities Project (http://nationalpriorities.org)