The internet is buzzing about the high price of the so-called economic stimulus bill. But because we here at FDC have limited knowledge about basic economic principles [we slept through college] and since we eat off the dollar menu from McDonalds, we honestly don’t have much to add to the debate.
Fortunately, there are much smarter people than us – some of whom have gone the extra mile in order to put this economic package into terms easy enough for even us to understand. [pop culture]
Katie Favazza boils it down, Barenaked style:
Setting aside the question of whether it’s right or wrong for the government to consider a stimulus at all, we can all agree that this is an obscene amount of money. Perhaps you’ve daydreamed about how you would spend $1 million dollars. But a billion? A trillion? Those are numbers we just don’t understand.
…
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.”)
She even breaks down the song lyrics in order for you to better visualize what each item costs.
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 treefort in our yard: $10,000
Pre-wrapped sausages: $19.23
An exotic pet, like a llama: $1,200
Or an emu: $500
Some art, like a Picasso: $944,137.47
Or a Garfunkel: $22.99
A monkey (Haven’t you always wanted a monkey?): $8,500
Our only point of contention with Katie’s analysis is the cost of an emu. Perhaps we got ripped off, but when we recently rented an emu for our Superbowl party it cost us $950. The deposit alone was $300. Note: We still have not gotten around to returning the emu and have no idea what we’re suppose to feed the thing.
The point in all of this: For the price of this stimulus package, you could buy everything the Barenaked Ladies’ requested in their song 680,217 times over.
Point well made, Katie. Thank you for making math fun, again.