Numbers

I was struggling with numbers this morning as every story has a metric attached. So much money being spent on "saving" the banking community and the billions anticipated that we will continue to spend. I dont know about you, but imagining billions is impossible, and millions a close second. So, I figured would start at the top:

> How many people in the US: 305,747,119
> What is the world population: 6,739,478,266
> How many houses projected to go into foreclosure (US) in the next year: over 6,000,000
> Average cost of a single family house in US: $264,000 (in October)
> Median Income (2007) per household $50,233.00
> Number of jobs lost this last month (nonfarm payroll for October alone in US) 240,000

And now we can begin. What is frightening is based on 305 million population, 6 million houses in foreclosure represents how many families? what percentage of the pie? How can a famiily making around $50,000. afford a $250,000 house? How can that family afford a downpayment of 20% and the month payments/ taxes/ maintenance? How could we even fantasize that is something that is even in the realm of possibilities? Based on the loss of jobs for October, what does that mean to Medicare, to food stamps to the rolling trend of people not purchasing, not saving which then results in more job losses, more escalation in services, less state taxes, less money for schools...and the spin cycle that seems to be on the horizon that for me, has no tooth until I can better understand it. More on this rant as you well know.