US taxpayers chipped in $0.0004 for our Karmas

So I was thinking about this the last few days, as many of my conservative colleagues and clients joke with me about the ‘epic failures’ of greengate – Solyndra and Fisker among others. So I started wondering exactly how much my fellow Americans chipped in for my Fisker. The math is pretty sobering.

We know that Fisker was approved for $529M in loan guarantees, but only drew $192M before the loan was cancelled.

After this amount, Fisker had made payments totaling $3M until the government ‘seized’ $21M of Fisker funds after it ‘missed’ a payment deadline, reducing the amount owed from $192M to $168M.

Hybrid Tech then paid the DOE $25M for the remaining $168M note owed by Fisker. Thus, the DOE ‘loss’ to taxpayers was $139M.

We know that there are 315M people in the US (end of 2012), so that loss translates to $0.44 per American. As we learned from the Occupy movements of late, only 122M pay federal income taxes. So the actual ‘subsidy’ that taxpayers spent in total was $1.14. Again, to be clear that’s $1.14 per tax payer or $0.44 per American.

BUT WAIT! That subsidy is for all Fisker Karmas ever produced – and we know that to be right around 2,700 or so. Thus, each tax payer subsidized each of our Karmas to the tune of $0.0004 per car. So next time one of your friends or clients or coworkers makes a snide remark about how they helped pay for your Karma, toss them a penny – then tell them that they’ve just made 25x their investment!