You and I Could Have Bought a House...

$3,500 Billion!

How much, already? Three thousand five hundred billion? Numbers like this leave us cold because they exceed the understanding of ordinary mortals, which gets confused after a million.

I will spare the reader the corny old populist refrain about how, had this money been invested in the fight against poverty, it would have enabled this and that. Everyone knows that, on this scale, that's not how things work.

All the same, it's possible to bring it all back to a human dimension. For example, this $3,500 billion represents $46,400 for every American family - the price of a home in certain poor regions of the country.

And one may also compare the issue to another decision of the United States, one taken in 1947, to promote the Marshall Plan. That succeeded in pulling 16 European countries out from the ruins of World War II and only cost American taxpayers $100 billion (in today's dollars) - or 35 times less.

What one measures this way is not only a mountain of bank notes. But also the gulf between policy supplied with vision and another policy which cruelly lacked it.