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packman

(16,296 posts)
Thu Mar 19, 2020, 10:56 AM Mar 2020

That $1k bailout out somehow reminded me of---

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Bonus Expeditionary Forces March on Washington

In the years after World War I, a long battle over providing a bonus payment to WWI veterans raged between Congress and the White House. Presidents Harding and Coolidge both vetoed early attempts to provide a bonus to WWI veterans. Congress overrode Coolidge’s veto in 1926, passing the World War Adjusted Compensation Act, otherwise known as the Bonus Act.

The act promised WWI veterans a bonus based on length of service between April 5, 1917 and July 1, 1919; $1 per day stateside and $1.25 per day overseas, with the payout capped at $500 for stateside veterans and $625* for overseas veterans. The catch was this bonus would not pay out until each veteran’s birthday in 1945, paying out to his estate if he should die before then. Although veterans were allowed to borrow against the bonus certificate beginning in 1927, by 1932, banks were short on credit to give.

...$625 in 1926 equates to roughly $8,600 in 2016 dollars. Distributed among 4.7 million veterans, the total payout would have been about $2.4 billion in 1926, equating to roughly $33 billion in 2016 dollars.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/bonus-expeditionary-forces-march-on-washington.htm
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