Billions and Billions and Billions……
One cannot fathom the horrors that have been perpetrated on the Israeli people. It is almost inconceivable that human beings have the capacity for such evil.
May Israel exact swift retribution for these atrocities and give the Israeli people the strength to withstand the inevitable criticism that Israel always receives when it defends itself.
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Long-time readers may remember this column from two years ago. I’m reprinting it now (with updated numbers) because of the war in Ukraine.
I’m not saying that we should or should not be involved in the Russia-Ukraine war. My deep concern is that we are sending billions of dollars in cash and military goods with no oversight and no accounting.
According to the CBS news show 60 Minutes, the U.S. is also paying Ukraine’s first responders, farmers and subsidizing Ukraine small businesses.
Did you know that?
So, we’re taxing small businesses and farmers here to subsidize their Ukrainian counterparts? Do you think our farmers and small businesses on Main Street could use some help too?
Our politicians from both sides of the aisle are saying that we’ll support Ukraine for as long as it takes. So, there’s no evaluation of the effectiveness or legitimacy of our support? There’s no limit to the amount of financial and military support we’ll provide? When is enough enough?
Once again, I’m not saying that we should or should not be involved in Ukraine. What I am saying is that we need to have Congressional oversight and a discussion of the duration and feasibility of our support.
So, keep all this in mind when you read the following. The $140 billion sent to Ukraine so far represents the equivalent of the federal income taxes paid by the citizens of New York City, Philadelphia and Cleveland.
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"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money." -- Attributed to Everett Dirksen (1896 – 1969), U.S. Senator from Illinois1
Every day we hear about government spending. It seems like there’s no shortage of needs for the government to fulfill. And every one of them takes money. Lots of money. Politicians propose programs that always cost billions of dollars. In senator Dirkson’s day programs were a few billion dollars and the Federal budget was about $300 billion. Nowadays programs are in the hundreds of billions and, some now are in the trillions!
Most of us will never have or be worth a million dollars. And probably none of us will ever be worth a billion dollars. In fact, according to Forbes, there are only about 2,640 billionaires in the world today. A pretty exclusive club.
But let’s pause a minute to try to comprehend a billion.
Yes, there are comparisons that are the standard fare of this type of story:
A billion pennies laid end to end would be 11,837 miles long, or about the distance from Philadelphia, PA to Perth Australia. (FYI, a trillion pennies would make 24 trips to the moon and back.)
A billion grains of sand would be a mess!
Here’s another way to look at it:
A billion seconds ago it was 1992.
A billion minutes ago children of people who knew Jesus could have been alive.
A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
A billion days ago no one walked on two feet on earth. Perhaps except for the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
A billion dollars ago was only 37 minutes and 38 seconds, at the rate our government spends.
Yup, at the rate our government spends it.
So, when we talk about the government spending money, keep in mind the primary way they fund spending is by taxation.
Ok, so how much is a billion dollars when the U.S. government taxes it?
In 2021 the IRS collected $2,268,956,208,000 from 164,187,262 individual taxpayers. That’s an average of $13,819 that everyone paid, from Warren Buffet to the high school kid flipping burgers.
So, the equivalent of a billion dollars in revenue is produced from taxing the hard work of 72,361 taxpayers.
This means that every time some politician cavalierly proposes spending a billion dollars, he’s spending the taxable efforts of 72,000 taxpayers. That’s the equivalent of the population of Kalamazoo, MI, Bismarck, ND or Scranton, PA. And $10 billion is the equivalent of Denver, CO.
Think about that.
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“Terrorism isn't a crime against people or property. It's a crime against our minds, using the death of innocents and destruction of property to make us fearful. Terrorists use the media to magnify their actions and further spread fear. And when we react out of fear, when we change our policy to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed -- even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we're indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail -- even if their attacks succeed.”
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“Billions and Billions….” — “It’s hard to talk about the Cosmos without using big numbers. I said “billion” many times on the Cosmos television series, which was seen by a great many people. But I never said “billions and billions.” For one thing, it’s too imprecise. How many billions are “billions and billions”? A few billion? Twenty billion? A hundred billion? “Billions and billions” is pretty vague. When we reconfigured and updated the series, I checked—and sure enough, I never said it.”― Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life & Death at the Brink of the Millennium
Torch Hamas & Iran!