Dear AIG - I Quit

Here is a link to a NY Times editorial from a VP at AIG. It is his resignation letter, and it is worth reading.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/opinion/25desantis.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=opinion

While Washington and the media focus on $160 million in bonuses, that they had previously agreed to, we the taxpayers are being asked to pay trillions in bailouts. I know that $160 million is a lot of money, certainly more than I have every seen, but it is pennies compared to the $787 stimulus package, the $700 billion TARP program, the $1 trillion in toxic assets bailout, or the billions in other bailouts (like the homeowners with bad mortgages).

Trillions. That's 1,000,000,000,000, Twelve zeros. 1,000 billion.

It makes me wonder. All this time we have been told that bailing out the banks, and homeowners, and automakers, etc., was the cheaper way out. That the economic price we would pay for letting these groups fail would be too high. How does that compare to the taxes we will have to pay for this huge new debt?

What do these big numbers mean to each of us that pay taxes? Well, there are 308 million people in the United States, but only 100 million pay taxes annually (due to age, income, and other factors). Here's the math:

• $500 billion mortgage bailout / 100 million taxpayers = $5,000 per taxpayer
• $1 trillion toxic asset program / 100 million taxpayers = $10,000 per taxpayer
• $787 billion stimulus program / 100 million taxpayers = $7,870 per taxpayer
• $700 billion TARP program from 2008 / 100 million taxpayers = $7,000 per taxpayer
• $100 billion automaker bailout / 100 million taxpayers = $1,000 per taxpayer
• $400 billion AIG bailout / 100 million taxpayers = $4,000 per taxpayer

This is a subtotal (because we aren't done spending yet) of $3,487 trillion dollars in less than six months. That amounts to $34,870 per taxpayer. So my wife and I are on the hook for $69,740 between the two of us.

The median household income in the United States in 2005 was $48,000.

Anyone else in a full panic? Because I sure am. And I am having a hard time believing that this is the cheaper way out.