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Mon 7 Jul, 2008 03:20 pm
This is too true to be funny.
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 in
one of its releases:
A.
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was on earth.
C.
A billion hours ago our ancestors were
living in the Stone Age.
D.
A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E.
A billion dollars ago was only
8 hours and 20 minutes,
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.
Louisiana Senator,
Mary Landrieu (D)
is presently asking Congress for
250 BILLION DOLLARS
to rebuild New Orleans . Interesting number...
what does it mean?
A.
Well... if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans
(every man, woman, and child)
you each get $516,528.
B.
Or... if you have one of the 188,251 homes in
New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787.
C.
Or... if you are a family of four...
your family gets $2,066,012.
Washington, D. C
<HELLO>
Are all your calculators broken??
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax & Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax (on which income tax is paid)
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago...
and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.
We had absolutely no national debt...
We had the largest middle class in the world...
and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
What happened?
Can you spell 'politicians'?
And I still have to
press '1'
for English!
I hope this goes around the
USA
at least 100 times --
What the heck happened?????
I did an exercise like this for a high school demographics class. It was very VERY interesting.
Like the congressman said, "A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money."
Bushie's war of choice in Iraq measures in trillions. How many billions in a trillion?
Talk about spending the moon and stars.
Quote:To put things in perspective, current estimates put the number of stars in the Milky Way at somewhere between 100 and 400 billion.
There are fewer than a half a trillion stars in our galaxy.
or
Quote:It would take almost three decades to spend a trillion dollars at $1,000 per second, and if spending at this rate occurred only during business hours, more than 120 years would be required to dispense the sum.
Quote:The entire expenditure of NASA over the last 40 years has been approx. $ 600 billion.
Let's say your working life is 40 years (from age 25 to age 65) and you work 40 hours a day, 52 weeks a year (you're a workaholic and don't take any vacations). If you earned $ 1 trillion during your working life, then you got paid $ 200,000 per minute.
(I didn't check the math)
The guy who wrote this is an idiot.
A billion dollars is less than $4 per American. Pressing "1" for English doesn't even cost that much.
This guy doesn't like to pay taxes. Is there anything interesting here?
What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy
link
Quote:
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago...
and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.
We had absolutely no national debt...
We had the largest middle class in the world...
and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
Since this was posted in the Political forum... I am going to stay focussed on the political part of this.
Does anyone want to defend the proposition that the middle class was better off in 1907 than they are now?
ebrown, I think the person who wrote this is critical of Landrieau and her 250 billion request for New Orleans. I think it is political. I dont know if the author supports the war in Iraq but he made some good points about the worth of a billion dollars and the Iraq war is costing trillions. That's what struck me. The NYTimes piece shows what could be done with the kind of money spent on Bushie's war.
Tobacco taxes didn't exist 100 years ago? They were first passed in 1794.
Liquor taxes didn't exist 100 years ago? Ever hear of the "whiskey rebellion?" That was in response to liquor taxes passed in 1791.
Idiot doesn't begin to describe this guy.
Let's look at how idiotic these math games are. As it turns out, a billion is quite a small quantity.
A billion water molecules weigh about 1/200 of a pound. Assuming you need a quart of water a day... this would keep you alive for about 30 minutes.
A billion brain cells is just 1% of what a normal adult has (and many of us lost that much in college)
Light can travel a billion miles in a scant hour and a half.
A billion miles will only get you a hairs breadth across the milky way ... not even to the next star.
My not so great computer does nearly 2 billion instructions every second, and I have written nearly 50 billion characters onto its hard drive.
((Edit, changed day to hour on how long it takes light to travel a billion miles (stupid typo that bothered me all night)))
The original article made a good point: A billion dollars is a huge amount of money. It also made a bad point: 250 billion is about right for New Orleans.
On the latter point: The current population of N.O. is a little over 100K, but the pre-hurricane population was 500K and the metropolitian area was over 1 million. Since the money is for the entire area, we are at 250K per person. Much of that money is not going to people, but to infrastructure. Billions of tax dollars spent over many years was washed away, so the idea that most of the money will go to rebuilt streets, water systems, sewage system and levies is not unreasonable. Of course, I want to see real estimates instead of hand waving, but the number is not really unreasonable.
On the former: I heard some commentators a few years back on NPR discussion a competing plans where one offered 5 billion savings over the other over 10 years. After the discussion, the moderator asked if 5 billion was really a significant difference. Both said no. I was stunned. Since all incremental spending the government does is on borrowed money, the interest on $5b at 4% is $200 million a year. Let's say you can pay a policeman, teacher, fireman, soldier $60K/yr (I know that's optimistic) and spend another $40K/yr in training and equipment for $100k/yr total. That $200 million in yearly interest represents 2,000 jobs. Each of those well paying jobs (if they are less well paying, there are more jobs) supports a family of four, so we are talking about a community of 8,000 people. That's just on the interest on $5 billion. OK, I know the US economy creates and destroys tens to hundreds of thousands of jobs a month, but hopefully you see my point.
$5 billion dollars could create a major US university from the ground up. Vanderbilt has an endowment of $3 billion, so we could beat them, even spending $1 billion on property. We'd be close to Duke at $4.5 billion if we left off some of the marble on campus, but Emory has around $5 billion, so they have us beat. Bill Gates could set up Gates universities all over the country if he wanted.
My belief is that every politician should sit down and really understand what it means to put nine zeros behind something. I think that's what the article was really after.
Re: How many zeros in a billion?
blueflame1 wrote:
A.
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was on earth.
Really?
Do that people know how to count?
a billion seconds is 31.71 yrs.
a billion minutes is 1901 yrs
I thought we humans have over a billion cells in our brains. Yet, some people might forget to buy a loaf of bread when food shopping. Big numbers do not add up to anything necessarily meaningful. That is why we have many stars and planets, and we humans might be all alone in space.
You maybe have a billion cells but everybody else has other figures:
Quote: "The human brain holds about 100 billion nerve cells."
Even big numbers are meaningful when one doesn't have enough of it..
Francis wrote:You maybe have a billion cells but everybody else has other figures:
Quote: "The human brain holds about 100 billion nerve cells."
Even big numbers are meaningful when one doesn't have enough of it..
ebrown wrote:
A billion brain cells is just 1% of what a normal adult has (and many of us lost that much in college)
For the mathematically challenged among us; 1% of 100 billion is 1 billion.
engineer wrote:
A billion dollars is a huge amount of money.
No it's not. It is less than $4 per American... about the cost of a Big Mac.
Quote:
250 billion is about right for New Orleans.
Is there any legitimate source of the $250 billion figure?
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