2023 Hey! I have a great idea!

Sunday, September 21, 2008

I read that the bailouts have cost American taxpayers between 2 and 5 thousand dollars each. I don't know whether that's taxpayers only or everybody, that may be the difference between the 2 and 5 estimates, but that doesn't matter to my idea.

Somebody really screwed up, and those somebodies who screwed it up took money out hand over fist until the bottom fell out, and now they get to walk away with their profits, leaving us to pay their bills.

Boo, hiss, not fair. But there's not a lot that can be done about that now.

Here's my idea to even things out a little.

At sometime in the past five years, stock in those companies was at a high of, let's say, $100 a share.
At the time of the bailout, the stock was worth, let's say, $1 a share.
I figure that my paying for the bailout should have bought me 2 to 5 thousand shares of that stock! I think I ought to have some interest in that stock!
Ok, we've got a lot of taxpayers, and that's a lot more than the market could support, so let's assign stock to taxpayers based on its high of the past five years - in our example that was $100, so each of us should get credit for 20 to 50 shares of stock. The government should hold it for us.
Then as the bailed-out companies recover and the price of their shares goes back up, we can sell "our" shares at any time, and we get to keep personally any profit over $100 per share. We can even apply it to future tax payments.
Whether the government has to buy and hold actual stock (they'd acquire it at the current (frozen) price and sell it at a future price) or just assign virtual interest to each of us is a detail to be worked out.

Why not?
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