What This Country Needs Is A Good Five Cent Nickel

A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money. - Senator Everett Dirksen

         

           It was little more than fifty years ago that the fictional John Beresford Tipton became famous for giving a million dollars, tax free, to a worthy individual, while the country watched the ensuing drama in the form of a weekly TV show.  It was hard then to put our arms around a million dollars, when salaries and expenses were so much smaller than the numbers we’ve become accustomed to in the 21st century.   To put things in perspective, in the early fifties, a college graduate, from a good university, could be offered $45 per week for his first job.  Minimum wage was 75 cents an hour and that was thought to be approximately one third of the average wage in the United States.   

          According to a survey from a well respected market research firm, the number of millionaires in the U.S. has grown to roughly 8 million, roughly 3% of the population.  Even more astounding, according to Forbes, there are presently more than 400 billionaires here, headed by Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates, and the majority of the ultra rich were born between 1952 and 1957. The word, “billion” is thrown around so much, we’ve become accustomed to hearing budgets and buyouts in the multiple billions, without really understanding the meaning of all those zeros.

          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. They asked us to think of a dollar in terms of time.  A billion seconds ago it was 1959.   A billion minutes ago it was the first century of our calendar. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age and a billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.   Now take a look at our national budget.  At the rate our government was spending money in 2008, a billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes! And that was before the current financial crises requiring even more government spending.

          So if John Beresford Tipton offered you a billion dollars, which you would only be able to spend after counting to a billion, consider this.  If it takes a second for each number (which is a little unrealistic), then it would take about 24 hours to count to 86,400. One can count to a million in less than half a month, but it will take more than 30 years to count to a billion.

          Now, consider this... In a blink of an eye, our understanding of the concept of a billion dollars has become almost irrelevant, because the word trillion has crept into every day language and budgets.  That's 12 zeroes to the left of the decimal point.  It would take a military jet, flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills. 

          The National Debt continues to increase more than $4 billion per day!   It might not be very long when a child says good night to his mother stating “I love you a gazillion quadrillion” and the Mother will be able to comprehend the scope of the number.