Apple’s (AAPL) printing money hand over fist. You knew that. What you may not know that Apple has so much dough, it could afford to pay every man, woman and child in the U.S. $556. Each. Selling high-priced hardware – over and over again – is creating a wealth-making machine like the world has never seen. Apple has now amassed a record pile of cash and investments of nearly $178 billion. That’s enough to give every American $556, a fact pointed out by Howard Silverblatt of S&P Dow Jones Indices. This massive pile of wealth is generated by the company’s ability to get consumers to line up every two years to sign up for costly contracts for high-priced phones. This business model, which keeps the total cost of the hardware itself largely masked to consumers, helped Apple report a bigger profit than the world has even seen in the fourth quarter of $18 billion. Investors are starting to get their hands on some of this cash in the form of dividends and stock buybacks. But as long as consumers are willing to keep paying Apple’s prices, the company almost can’t get rid of its money fast enough. What a pile of money it is. No other company comes close. Even if Microsoft paid out all its cash and investments to Americans, that would amount to $319 a person. And Microsoft is the closest behind Apple. Consumers. Maybe you can ask for a piece of your money back – since you’ve helped create the pile. Don’t count on it. S&P 500 STOCKS AND WHAT THEY COULD PAY EVERY AMERICAN BASED ON CASH AND INVESTMENTSCompanyTickerCash+investment per AmericanAppleAAPL$556.1MicrosoftMSFT$319.3GoogleGOOGL$195.40Cisco SystemsCSCO$166.28YahooYHOO$164.32 Sources: S&P Capital IQ, USA TODAY research