I was a little gruff when I pointed this out in another thread. But I've exchanged a few private emails with Grumpy and have a world of respect for him, so I'll try to be more polite this time. First off, there's the math issue. Whoever orginated this says, "To make the math simple, let's assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+. Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up. So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billion that equals $425,000.00."

Run that through a calculator and you'll see the problem. Just like JD pointed out (and Tim did on the other thread), $85,000,000,000 ÷ 200,000,000 people = $425 a person. But even if there were a way to give every American over 18 $425,000, that wouldn't make everybody in America suddenly affluent. Here some figures I got from http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2008/02/05/average-net-worth-values/

You might find a better site to get this info from. I just went with the first one I found, because the exact numbers don't matter; it's the general principle that does. Here is what they was the average net worth of an American family in 2004, broken down by the age of the head of household:

Under 35 years old = $14,200 ($73,500)
35-44 years old = $69,400 ($299,200)
45-54 years old = $144,700 ($542,700)
55-64 years old = $248,700 ($843,800)
65-74 years old = $190,100 ($690,900)
Over 75 years old = $163,100 ($528,100)

Remember, this if families, not individuals. So let's do some rough math (again, exact numbers don't matter here), and say that for individuals, cut those numbers in half. So, the effect of giving everyone in America $425,000 would be to at least quadruple the net worth of the majority of Americans, and multiply the net worth of poor household by many more times than that. So, that guy that pumps gas for $8/hr, do you think he's going to keep working for that? Heck no, it's going to cost $50,000/yr or more to hire him, or anybody else. So how are businesses going to afford help? They'll have to multiply their prices. The net result of handing out all that money would be virtually instant, enormous inflation that would devalue the dollar tremendously, and destroy our economy.