Dollar signs
It may have sounded significant when President Obama last week proposed ways to reduce government spending by $100 million. But with the federal budget deficit nearing $2 trillion, $100 million is less than meets the ear.
Jack Uldrich at jumpthecurve.net gives an example of the difference between 1 million, 1 billion, and 1 trillion in his futurist lectures. He asks readers and listeners to think about seconds going backwards . . .
• 1 million seconds ago = 12 days ago
• 1 billion seconds ago = 30 years ago
• 1 trillion seconds ago = 30,000 b.c.
4 comments:
Ha ha! Great post!
It does seem weird to hear the President brag about cutting 100 million in spending (which technically isn't always a bad thing) when he pushed to have almost 800 billion in dollars alloted to "stimulate" the economy. What a ridiculous situation we're in.
Yeah - in one sense, you can look at it like "you have to start somewhere", but it would probably be the equivalent of Amy and I cutting 5 cents out of our yearly budget.
I just calculated how much a person would have to spend every SECOND of a 75 year lifespan in order to reach $9 trillion dollars (the deficit the WH just recently predicted). I came up with $3,800 per second.
I felt like I was going cross-eyed making sure I had all of the numbers correct (unless I'm wrong).
I think that I could spend that per second. That is incredible.
TJK
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