America in debt

They are everywhere, reminders that just about every single citizen in this country is in debt, commercials for "get out of debt" services on the radio and television, houses being foreclosed, cars being repossessed, banks shutting down, or being bought up and bailed out. But why, if just about everyone is in over their heads, do corporations get the bail outs? In July of last year, Louise Story for the New York Times wrote about how many banks who received tax payer's dollars to keep them afloat paid out seven figure bonuses to multiple employees. Obviously, this money wasn't paid to the tellers who probably live paycheck to paycheck surviving on $10/hr who could pay off debts (to banks!) with a large bonus, but to the upper management who have multiple savings accounts and more money than they will spend in their lifetime. Why did the bank tellers (and everyone else) have to pay for their bosses' bonuses?

The government should have put more thought into where to spend that money that went to bailing out banks and car dealerships. The internet has floated figures around, such as, if all the money was divided equally among citizens 18+ it would mean roughly $425,000/person but the math was wrong and it would only be $425/person. If the government bailed out the citizens 18+ that had debt that would take X percentage of each paycheck to pay off, then they could have really done something. Obviously, there will always be those people who just go buy new things and don't pay off debts, but even that would stimulate the economy more than giving it to those who already have millions and are just going to stash it.

Then, the government ran Cash for Clunkers where people could take their gas guzzling cars and trade them in for money down on new cars. Sounds like a good idea, but if these people were actually driving clunkers in the first place and not newer cars it's probably because they can't afford car payments (sure, there are people who are just frugal and don't spend when it's not necessary, but that's not the majority of American citizens). Sure, cars can be repossessed, but they lose so much value when they leave the lot alone, then the car has be sold as used and the bank takes a hit not making their money off of that loan. Much like when everyone was qualifying for good sized mortgages, they took on more debt than they could possibly pay off, the banks had to repossess many houses, and now the houses aren't worth anywhere near as much and banks have to salvage what they can.

As a society, Americans got greedy and started looking to other countries for cheaper products and cheaper labor and as we crept into the red we began to borrow money from the same countries we were pumping money into. Now, we don't have enough money staying inside our own country to sustain us and something needs to be done. Something better than handing trillions of dollars to corporations, something to level the playing field within the country again, and that something is up to the government to figure out.