This graphic demonstrates how the 2008 bailout, so far, costs as much as several large and famous government projects added up together. Yes, these numbers are inflation adjusted.
Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, the Moonshot, S&L Crisis, Korean War, and even The New Deal, which has been derided by some as being like the most expensive socialist thing ever, can’t hold a candle to the payouts from the attempts to fix the current economic crisis. Take NASA. As Meg pointed out to me over IM, there’s never been any fun beach excursions provided by NASA. The same, however, cannot be said for the current bailout, especially if your name begins with an A, ends with a G, and there’s an I in there.
Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion
TOTAL: $3,920,000,000,000
2008 BAILOUT TOTAL AS OF NOV 2008: $4,616,000,000,000
Scary Bailout Money Info Graphic [Voltage Blog based on a BoingBoing post which was based on data crunched by Jim Bianco of Bianco Research]
Hmm… coming from MA, if we added the BIG DIG project, we would surely be spending more than the bailout!
It’s a little disingenuous to throw the Louisiana Purchase in there since it is one of the greatest deals in history.
I mean, let’s adjust the whole deal instead of the final numbers. Jefferson wanted to spend $10 million just for New Orleans. Adjusting for inflation, that’s $137 billion for one city. So, the offer really was, “hey, throw in another $80 billion and we’ll give you another 800,000 square miles and you can double the size of your country”.
So, I guess it’s technically true that it cost less than some of those other things. Of course, it’s also technically true that if I found some down on his luck stock broker and he offered to trade me his new Bugatti Veyron for a for a bottle of Colt 45, then I could say a BV costs less than what I plaid for my first car.
When it comes to subsidizing risks and costs of big business in this country, there are no limits.
When it comes time to help the working stiff (or used-to-be-working stiff, well, then we bust out the tough love and tell them “you gotta lift yourself up by your bootstraps”.
@facted: Wait…so the Louisiana Purchase WASN’T an investment? NASA was money in the trash?
This is what we call a classic “Apples-To-Oranges Fail”…
It amazes me that so many people think the economy will plummet into the abyss if some large financial firms reap what they sow. They are financial firms. If they go under, their clients get taken by the remaining firms. To cover the added workload, said firms then have to hire more people. Now where might they find a large pool of skilled workers to help them out? Just don’t hire the idiots from VP on up from the failed firms. They’ve already proven their incompetence.
A more accurate representation would be to portray the non-inflation adjusted figures as a percentage of GDP, and then to superimpose a graph showing aggregate government spending as a percentage of GDP.
Simply using inflation-adjusted figures is misleading.
Although one could argue not more misleading than comparing government expenditures to government assumption of debt (although in reality it is more complicated than this simply binary, in each pie chart).
-Math/Economics major