I majored in English and withdrew twice from Econ 101 b/c my brain just can't go there. So I have no idea how to do the math on this. But I was just wondering. What if (instead of pouring blue bezillions into the gaping maw we call Wall Street) the bailout took the shape of paying off all our mortgages (primary residence only)? What would the cost to the gov't/taxpayers be?
Think about it. Without that huge monthly nut, ordinary folks like us would have more disposable income -- to spend on the arts, charitable contributions, travel, dining, entertainment, or hey what about green retrofitting our homes, trading up to a more energy efficient car, or putting in fabulous gardens for food, flowers, herbs, wildlife and carbon sequestration?
I don't want to catch a lot of grief about this, I am just wondering out loud, curious if someone who can do this math thinks it might make sense. Not whether it's fair (and who could argue that allowing Wall Street to continue absurd CEO compensation with bailout funds was fair?), but whether it would be a cost effective and likely-to-succeed way to turn the current economic situation around. Sometimes what works is what works, and I wonder if this would work.
Okay, what about this. What if instead of ultimately spending however many trillions on corporate bailouts, we just handed $1 million or even half that much to every citizen of legal majority, or every head of household, or something like that. On its face this seems like it would accomplish a similar set of good results as the first idea, but it might be more fair in terms of providing reward for those who already paid off their mortgage, and not just reward/relief for those who got upside down or unemployed/underemployed at the worst possible time.