Saturday, July 30, 2011

Shall we quantify the National Debt for our Youth

My attempt goes something simple like this: The wealth discribed by the word billionaire = one thousand millions of dollars. There are in the world 1210 people who have at least this much money. When we add the wealth of these few people together, the least we can realize as a sum (given that there are those who have more than one billion) would therefore be 1210 billions of dollars. The wealth described in one trillion dollars = 1000 billions of dollars. The wealth represented by the national debt exceeds the wealth of all the (solitary) billionaires in the world by a factor of 11.8181818182 x. Stated another way, to pay off the National debt would require 11.8181818182 thousand. (solitary) billionaires to each pony up a thousand million or one billion. The world does not contain this many people who have become at least (1) billionaires. In the words of one of the James Bond movies: "The world is not enough". How can sane people ( we represent ourselves as such) contemplate such grandure while ignoring the slip towards tyranny servicing such a staggering debt imposes?

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