That’s how much land could be given to every single US citizen while allowing the government to keep its 640 million acres of land. Oh yeah I almost forgot, it also leaves the small sum of 1.5 BILLION acres for anything else anyone could possibly want. To give you a sense of scale: 1.5 billion acres is 1.85 times INDIA’s total area. India is the seventh largest country in the entire world.
It would only take 12% of the land in this country to give each and every individual 39476.25 square feet of their very own land.
Assuming each person is also given 200 square feet of living space at the average finished cost of $184/sqft, it would cost the government about $12 trillion dollars to house everyone in brand new construction. HOUSES. Not apartments, HOUSES. Sounds like a lot of money though, right?
Well, turns out if the government allocated just half of its military spending (based on 2020 numbers to avoid weird COVID things), it would take them 33 years to pay for it all. Keep in mind that this is based on the price you or I would pay to have a house constructed, not what the government would pay for a guaranteed contract involving millions of homes.
I think this bears repeating: if the government spent what the average individual would to build a new house (never would happen) they could provide the entire population with homes. They could pay for it in just 3 years longer than the average mortgage by limiting defense spending to a paltry $350 billion a year.
“Oh but the population will grow and we can't just give away that much land” Yeah, obviously. This is an extreme example to prove a point. If the government has enough resources to hypothetically do something as outrageous as provide over 300 million people with nearly an acre of land AND housing to go with it, they can provide well-constructed and well-maintained apartments that don't fall to disrepair and crime. They can afford to make them free. Just pay utilities. Or, they could make the rent something affordable to help people survive while also pressuring land owners and corporations to lower rent so they can remain competitive. Literally tax like two fucking billionaires a year and it's paid for.
“oh but if housing is paid for then nobody is going to work” Literally shut the fuck up. I know I would work. I would continue going to school. Hell, I'd probably pursue multiple doctorates, or finish mine and go to medical school. Literally the only fear I have for my future is financial, being able to afford a roof over my head. If that roof were guaranteed, I'd take every risk and spare no expense in my quest to cram as much information into my insatiable lump of self-aware fat as I possibly can. I would become the biggest spending, most taxable motherfucker on the planet, and I'm sure a whole bunch of other people would do the same.
The US is incredibly wealthy. It's impossible to comprehend the scale at which the government is operating, and how unimaginably trivial it would be for it to make our lives wonderful. I have no idea what more they could possibly want. Literally owning Mars is probably the next big step but that place is honestly a shithole.
Math:
(2.43B acres-(1.5B acres+640M acres))/320M people= .90625 acres/person