Gov't wants to bail out the big three.

[Seacrest]

$tevie wrote:
I would like someone smarter than I am to figure out what would happen if we had taken all this money being used for bailouts and split it up among all the non-incarcerated non-institutionalized adults in this country.

Hyperinflation, probably. In combination with declining asset prices (stocks, real estate), maybe stagflation would be more like it.
Only, because of the global competition for wages, we would get only the price increases, not the wage increases.
We got a little taste of it with gas prices and other commodities during the summer.
There are many components to that, of course, but it's no surprise that the time of the most extreme rises in pump prices coincided with the arrival of those stimulus checks.

Also, by answering your question I am in no way, shape or form insinuating that I am smarter than you. ;-)

I am no fan of these industry bailouts, but I think handing money out to an over-indebted society is, in general, a bad idea. The money just ends up in the same places -- with the debt holders -- only none of the lessons of thrift, responsibility and risk-management are learned as they would be if bad investments are allowed to fail.