Spend $400 in 15 minutes? Child’s play!

A few days before Christmas I read a newspaper report about a stolen debit card. Apparently the victim’s wallet was taken from her purse, which hung from her shoulder, while she shopped. Such a theft is a shameful indictment on human nature, especially at Christmastime. But it’s not at all surprising.

The thief wasted no time in using the ill-gotten windfall. While the victim was submitting the police report a female suspect was making purchases at the same store where the theft occurred. According to the newspaper’s account the thief spent $400 in 15 minutes.

That’s a fair amount of money. It may not be a leap-from-the-window loss, but more than most people care to lose. An employee would have to earn $50 per hour just to cover the 15 minute spending spree, based on the eight-hour day. That’s an annual salary of $104,000. Not too shabby in these economic times.

But this pickpocket went through $400 in 15 minutes. A worker must make $1600 per hour, $64,000 per week, over $3.3 million per year to earn the equivalent of what this thief stole. The CEOs of Home Depot, Motorola, eBay, and UPS don’t earn that much, according to the Forbes 2008 list of executive salaries.

The 500 CEOs on the Forbes list received a cumulative salary of $6.4 billion in 2007, making the $400 debit card theft seem like child’s play. However, I’m not condemning CEO salaries. Although CEOs are routinely demonized, their earnings are child’s play compared to the federal government’s expenditures. Do you realize that those CEOs will have to earn that $6.4 billion each and every year until 2565 to offset 2010’s federal budget of $3,550,000,000,000? That’s $3.55 trillion. I think I smell pirates, and they aren’t cruising the Somali coastline or the corporate boardroom.

CEOs would fare a little better if they pooled their $6.4 billion to combat Congress’ recently passed $290 billion increase in the debt ceiling, which will float Washington for about six weeks. CEOs need only to chip in their next 45 years worth of collective earnings to satisfy government’s increased borrowing. The entire Forbes list can be funded for their entire working lives on what the federal government can spend in a month and a half.

Let’s see how these corporate “robber barons” stack up against other significant numbers. We’ll begin with the national debt, which increases faster than the human eye can follow. According to USDebtClock.org the national debt grows by $1 million every 25 seconds, standing at $12.3 trillion. Now let that figure roll around in your head for a minute or two. How long would our CEOs have to work to fund the current debt? Only 1,926 years. And that’s assuming the debt remains static, which it doesn’t.

In reality, the debt’s growth rate will consume the collective salaries of the Forbes top 500 CEOs in just two days. As for the middle class, the debt’s growth rate will erase a $40,000 annual salary every second.

2007’s CEO salaries could pay off our Social Security obligations in 2,207 years, Medicare Part D in 2,921 years and Medicare in 11,616 years. Our unfunded liabilities exceed $107 trillion. That’s 16,744 years in CEO pay. Worse yet, these unfunded liabilities could be satisfied only if you had 80 cents for every hour that has passed since scientists say the universe was born some 15 billion years ago. Sadly, those liabilities would increase by about $3 million before you finished writing your check.

Somehow losing $400 in 15 minutes doesn’t sound so bad now. The federal government can lose $36 million in that amount of time. Keep that in mind the next time a politician says the federal budget has been cut to the bone.