A Billion a good read!

[MOP]

The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" in a casual manner, think about whether you want the "politicians" spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective.


1. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

2. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

3. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Old Stone Age.

4. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

5. A billion dollars ago was only 4 hours and 10-minutes ago, at the rate our government is spending it.


While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at New Orleans. It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

A Louisiana Senator is presently asking the Congress for only $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans.

Now that's an interesting number; what does it mean?

1. Well, if you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you each get $515,810.

2. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans , your home gets $1,328,014.

3. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,063,240.


Hello -- Washington, D.C.?? HELLO??? Are all your calculators broken??

This is too true to be funny.

[harbormaster]

Normally, I would say no politics, BUT these are interesting figures and this seems to poke fun at ALL politicians which I wholeheartedly agree with.

[22zxla]

just curious, how much is each iraq citizen getting? were spending billions over there? Or how much is each alien getting,were speding 20 billion a year at NASA? Believe me the citizens will get nothing and corporations will get it all.

[DonziDave]

These days, we throw around the "B" word without a thought. Here is a good example to help you visualize how much money a billion dollars really represents.

A million dollar stack of new $100 bills is only one foot tall.
A billion dollar stack of new $100 bills is one thousand feet tall....as tall as the Empire State Building.....!!!!

Makes you think....

[Tony]

Our national debt (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14756403/site/newsweek/) is obscene. Our children, and theirs, will be severely burdened by this...which will only worsen in coming years as the social security and medicare programs implode.

:beer:

[Patti]

I agree with Tony....very well said :)

[McGary911]

It's not that unusual for people to not understand the enormity of some numbers that are thrown around in normal conversation. I won't even get into scientific notation, but people treat a the difference between a million and billion like a billion is 5 X 1,000,000. Guess it can happen, with all of these numbers always thrown around when talking about budgets, finance markets, personal fortunes, etc.....

I usually open their eyes with this illustration:

A million seconds is about 11 1/2 days. (they have to believe me on this)

Then ask them, how long is a billion seconds? The most a typical person will answer tends to be around 5 years. You should see the look on their faces when I break it to them that it's almost 32 years :eek!: (actually, 31.688087814028950237026896848937 years :) )

Then I get told that I'm crazy\wrong\full of chit\owe them $$ from the bar bet. .....until they do the math themselves......then they are even MORE jealous of Bill Gates.......