Putting the proposed stimulus plan in perspective can be pretty tough. For example if you stacked $1 trillion, it would get about 1/3 of the way to the Moon. Yesterday Mitch McConnell pointed out that if you spent a million dollars a day every day since the birth of Christ, it would STILL be considerably less than $1 trillion.
Perhaps the band Barenaked Ladies can help. They’ve publicly speculated about what they would do if they had a million dollars. How much do their requests cost? (We’ll use the version from the album Gordon, as it includes a few bonus items, like “dijon ketchup.”)
A house, in this case on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC: $899,000
Furniture for your house, maybe a nice chesterfield: $2,595
Or an ottoman: $719
A K-car, a nice reliant automobile: $3,683
Love: Unspecified
A treefort in our yard: $10,000
Maybe we could put a little tiny fridge in there: $99.99
Pre-wrapped sausages: $19.23
A fur coat, but not a real fur coat, that’s cruel: $599
An exotic pet, like a llama: $1,200
Or an emu: $500
John Merrick’s remains: Unknown (In 1987, Michael Jackson’s alleged $1,000,000 bid for the remains was rejected, but you can listen to the UK band “John Merrick’s Remains” for free on MySpace.)
A limousine to the store, ‘cause it costs more: $250
Kraft dinners: $32.21
Really expensive ketchup: $5.45
A green dress, but not a real green dress, that’s cruel: $130
Some art, like a Picasso: $944,137.47
Or a Garfunkel: $22.99
A monkey (Haven’t you always wanted a monkey?): $8,500Bearing in mind that houses on Capitol Hill are pricey and that a custom treefort can get pretty high, too, the total for everything the Canadian men would do if they had $1,000,000 is actually $1,871,461.13.
That’s a lot of dough, but it doesn’t come close to $1.273 trillion.
In fact, any among us could buy everything that the Barenaked Ladies want 680,217 times with the amount of money that the Senate wants to spend–money that we don’t have in the first place.
I’m glad you liked it!
I wonder what a $1.2T house would look like. hehe.