How Much is $700 Billion?

How Much is $700 Billion?
Jeanna BrynerSenior WriterLiveScience.com Tue Sep 30, 5:55 PM ET

The short answer: a lot.
The long answer: depends on how you look at it.

Whatever your viewpoint, here's how $700 billion - the figure inked inthe initial dead-in-the-water government bailout bill for Wall Street- compares to other vast sums.

NASA in fiscal year 2009 will launch several missions into space andpay for hundreds of people to operate a host of space telescopes andeven remote robots on Mars and run a PR and media department that putsmost large corporations to shame. The agency's budget: $17.6 billion,or 2.5 percent of the bailout sum.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has an annual budget of $6.06billion to support research and education on astronomy, chemistry,materials science, computing, engineering, earth sciences, nanoscienceand physics (among others) at more than 1,900 universities andinstitutions across the United States.

You have to turn to much bigger initiatives, like war and defense, toget beyond this chump change and approach the bailout figure.

From 2003 through the end of fiscal year 2009, Congress hasappropriated $606 billion for military operations and other activitiesassociated with the war in Iraq, according to the Congressional BudgetOffice (CBO). The entire military budget for fiscal 2008 is $481.4billion.

Social Security is a $608 billion annual program.Many analysts fear the bailout because the cost must ultimately beborne by taxpayers.

Based on the U.S. Census Bureau's estimate of the current populationof about 305 million people, each person would have to pay $2,300 tofund the $700,000,000,000. If each American (including children) paida dollar a day, it would take more than six years to pay the money infull. One might argue, however, that this $700 billion would be amodest splash in the bucket of national debt, which already stands atwell over $9 trillion (which means you already owe $31,642 each).

Even the New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez would losesleep over all those zeros. Currently the top paid major leaguebaseball player, Rodriguez takes home $28 million a year, meaning itwould take 25,000 A-Rod salaries to carry the $700 billion.

Nobody is rich enough to pay back this $700 billion by himself. Infact, the Forbes 400 richest list recently came out. It would takemost of what these 400 people collectively have - a combined net worthof $1.57 trillion - to dig out of this mess.