My perspective was shaken earlier this week by a few articles and emails I have been sifting through.  I had read interesting articles studying how the human mind values 100 cents more than 1 dollar.  Other articles talking about how the Big 3 Auto industries are fouling up the “Bailout” that we supplied them with.  But among the most interesting was an article pertaining to the true value of the word “billion” which has been tossed around more than your mother’s favorite salad.

To summarize a few points, “A billion seconds ago it was 1959…A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive… 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 (for all you evolutionoids).”  I can’t imagine what the world would be like if the government asked us for as much of our time as it did our money!
Now to rant: Using simple math and a few online sources, most of you have already calculated that every human’s share from our current $10.6 x (10^12) deficit would average out to about $35k per person.  According to the National US Debt clock, it continues to climb $3.31 billion a day!  Currently a Louisiana Senator is asking for $250 billion to rebuild weather-torn New Orleans, with a little “mathematical judo” one finds that this roughly equates to $1.5 million per household.  Many of you have calculated figures like this already, but to most this is a “shake- up” to the way you view a billion dollars.  Perhaps we should take from the example of the study at the beginning of the article and give them 1 billion cents, so that the “higher ups” may realize the value of the penny over the dollar!