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 alive.
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 the Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans.
Interesting number, what does it mean?
Well, if you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you each get $516, 528.
Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787
Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.
Washington, D.C. !!!……………….Are all your calculators broken????
Maybe everyone should just flood their houses, then we can all be on the “big easy” street for the rest of our lives, and forget about working, and paying taxes and all that useless stuff!
forward via email.
(1e9 min) * (1 hr / 60 min) * (1 day / 24 hrs) * (1 year / 365.25 days) = 1901.28 years ago.
1901.28 years ago was 104 of the common era, disregarding changes to the calendar. Jesus, if he was ever alive, was long dead at this point.
Applying the same sort of fifth-grade arithmetic gives us 1974 for one billion seconds ago.
Let me give you another one: a billion is pretty close to the number of kneejerk idiots who will read this kind of drivel without checking basic facts.
Because if we only rebuild the homes, all the businesses would function normally, too.
They need to fix more than homes, like the electricity that people need, installing new fresh water lines, repairing the roads, rebuilding schools, etc.
And, yes, I would rather have politicians spending my money than the people who forward these emails.
If you spent $1000 a day, you could spend 1 million dollars ($1,000,000.00) in about 3 years. At that same pace, $1,000/day, 1 billion dollars ($1,000,000,000.00) would take you 3,000 years. Yes, if Jesus was still alive and spending $1000 every day, he would still only be 2/3 of the way to spending 1 billion dollars.
Yeah, it’s a fucking big number.
1,000,000,000 /60 /60 /24 /365= 31.71 years.
Crap like this is why you don’t forward emails. People like me make people like you look stupid.
-Anonymous
Not only can you not handle 5th grade math, but you want the whole world to know it?!
You are a moron, and now EVERYONE knows it…
Very naive analysis.
New Orleans lost in a day, what took hundreds of years and millions of hands and billions of dollars to build since its birth. If we are to wait for another hundred years for her to come back, perhaps we can continue spending at the same rate we have been for years, maintaining roads, powerlines, waterworks and telephones. If we are to wait generations for families to return, then we can wait for them to earn back all they they lost overnight. However, if can hope that she can be rebuilt in our lifetimes, we need to spend at this rate to even gain the foundation upon which to build.
Please don’t imply that anyone won the lottery by losing their home. I have not seen anyone celebrating their Katrina winnings. At best, we have seen people struggling to survive in a country that has forgotten its citizens. It seems that these Americans have lost their membership.
By all means, spend 250 billion to rebuild New Orleans.
So that it can be wiped out again in a few years when the next big hurricane comes along. Or maybe it will survive for a few decades, til the polar ice caps melt and submerge the whole city below sea level.
It would make more sense to pay people to relocate.