Now that Congressional Democrats and Republicans have given away 300 semi-trucks full of $100 bills, $700,000,000,000 to the same speculators who caused the on-going financial meltdown, we might as well ask ourselves what the same amount of money could have bought for the rest of us.

The average cost of construction for a high school is about $25,000 per student.

(There's a brief summary at http://blog.news-record.com/staff/chalkb oard/archives/2007/10/tricky_numbers.sht ml and infinite details at http://www.wakegov.com/NR/rdonlyres/614D 9A8E-42FB-424F-AFEA-73E604598279/0/const ructioncostanalysisfinalpresentation.pdf )

So it's probably fair to say that you can build a beautiful high school for twice that amount... a high school with a couple of Olympic pools, huge classrooms, and high-tech goodies galore.

For $50,000 per student, a beautiful high school for 1000 students will cost $50,000,000.

1000 of these beautiful high schools will cost $50,000,000,000, and by the time you spend $700,000,000,000, you will have built...

14,000 beautiful high schools, with 14,000,000 students enrolled in them.