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Comment by Rod | Hacker News Reader

I wholeheartedly agree with your point. But is it a matter of economic illiteracy? Isn't it a matter of plain innumeracy? $1 trillion = 1E12 dollars, 300 million Americans = 3E8 persons, and hence that is only approx. 3 grand per person, like you mentioned. This is basic arithmetic. It's not even a problem of economic illiteracy, though economic illiteracy is a serious problem which allows demagogues to manipulate the masses easily. Cheap sentimentalism is defeating rationality. Even if the rich were heavily taxed, there's simply not enough money to pay for the benefits this generation of Americans seems to feel entitled to.

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I find it more helpful to divide these huge numbers by the number of US households (aprox. 100,000,000)

Doing that we get $10,000/household instead of $3,000 for every man, woman, child, prisoner, etc.

I think budget numbers ought to be reported this way. The recent $410 billion spending bill would be reported as $4100/household spending bill. Suddenly people start to think differently - Do I really want to borrow $4100 to spend on this?

You're quite right. My analysis was simplistic and naive.

This is a nice statistic - but you should rather use the number of economically active people rather than the whole population when you calculate the per person value.

That is because only the economically active persons generate wealth (and they would have to eventually pay the stimulus).

right but people aren't encouraged to think critically about economics and so the idea of doing the math never occurs to them. I think there is a cognitive bias involved in not examining too closely the exact methods of a leader who tells you that he will get more resources for the tribe. We prefer to think of ourselves and project an image of empathy and community, but the most effective tribes were those that killed others and stole their resources. So we like to gloss over the details because it allows us to maintain our self image. In essence the best leaders are Machiavellian, so we look the other way and pretend our share of the plunder didn't come from initiating force.

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