700 Billion Dollars

Per the Bernie Sanders post below, a billion dollars spent on infrastructure creates 47,000 jobs. If the $700 billion we just appropriated for Wall Street could be spent on bridges, highways, sewer lines, housing for homeless people, new schools and so on, it would create 32.9 million new jobs. At present, 154.7 million Americans are working. That is a lot of extra jobs.

Think of all the construction workers and teachers and child care workers and engineers we could hire with 700 billion dollars. Think of the country we could build.

And now this from The Guardian on October 18:

Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government's cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.

I think I will say no more.