A billion

Eric&Susan

Not trying to start a political bashing hate thread but I got this in an email today and it reall made me stop and think:

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.

Have a nice day.................

DanielB

yeah... its quite scary, last time i checked, i think our national Debt was around 7-8 trillion dollars.

marlinspike

You also have to consider how little money has come to mean. Exxon posted over $36 billion in profit last year (not sales, profit). Even the Blackberry NTP settlement was $612.5 million. It's not so much spending that's the problem as where is money spent and how/from whom is it collected. The problem is we are keen to vote for those who cut taxes and increase spending. It's fine to do one but not both. How Clinton managed to get away with increasing taxes I'll never know.
Oh, and it's really 1974
104AD so Jesus wasn't around
true
true
about 3.5 hours ($2,524.9billion/year according to the GAO)