Economic Stimulus: $1 Million Per Day Since Jesus Christ Falls Short
Spending of $1 Million Per Day Since Christ's Birth Would Come to About $734 Billion
Mitch McConnell says, to give the proposed economic stimulus plan some perspective: "If you started the day Jesus Christ was born and spent $1 million every day since then, you still wouldn't have spent $1 trillion."
We could do the math, but politifact.com in care of the St. Petersburg Times did the math for us. Biblical scholars may debate exactly when Jesus Christ was born, but the most common finding is that Jesus Christ was born some wher around 4 B.C. If this is true, then 4 B.C. should be adjusted to 0 B.C. and this would be 2012, which in a screwy way would mean Barack Obama was up for re-election, which would make some people happy, whatever!
So let's stick with Mitch McConnell's math. Take 2012 years times 365 days, then add 513 days for leap years, and you get about $734.5 billion. That's less than an economic stimulus package that could cost anywhere from about $800 billion to $1.2 trillion. But McConnell omits, since Republicans are such friends with Wall Street, that the sum is only slightly higher than the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.
Sometimes the numbers numb us. It may have been better if million and billion and trillion didn't rhyme. They make the dollar amounts sound too much alike. For example, $100 million to the ear sounds like way more than $1 billion, whereas actually $100 million is only 10 percent of $1 billion. Then we get into trillions, such as this year's $1.2 trillion budget deficit and the overall $11.7 trillion budget debt, and we don't quite realize that $1 trillion is actually $1,000,000,000,000, or $1,000,000 million, or $1 million million. There are many ways of looking at it.
Mitch McConnell's Jesus Christ analogy is a good one. Another is to calculate that by this point in time next year, the national debt will be around $12 trillion. Divide that by 300,000,000 million Americans, and you will see a debt of about $40,000 per person. If this a debt that we want to leave our children and grandchildren? If not, why have we continually cut federal taxes for the past 30 years?
SOURCE
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/feb/03/mitch-mcconnell/stimulus-plan-more-million-day-jesus-christ-was-bo
Published by Michael Thompson
Michael Thompson is a retired newspaper reporter who lives in Saginaw, Michigan. Main topics are political and social justice issues, with occasional escapism into sports and so forth. View profile
- Jesus Christ: His Genealogy This article discusses thoroughly and settles (finally) the age old question of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Of the two listed in the New Testament, only one can be that through which the Jew's Messiah and the Chri...
Jesus Touches My Heart Every DayJesus Christ came into the world to set people free. - Jesus ChristThere has been much debate throughout the years relative to the genealogical lineage of Jesus Christ. The New Testament gospel records cite two. Why? Which is the actual line of Jesus? Only one can be. This docum...
- Kentucky's Mitch McConnell Main Foe of Obama and DemocratsBarack Obama and Democrats do not have total control of Congress. Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans still can filibuster.
- Jesus ChristThis treatise was originally begun as an emailed response to the first person to come to my first ever website. His simple request was that he might know more about Jesus. This paper was written to address that requ...
- Jesus Christ: The True Messiah
- Get Green, Go Green: Environmental Purchases to Consider with President Obama's Ec...
- Be a Good Citizen: Read Obama's Economic Stimulus Plan
- We the People, Need a Real Economic Stimulus Plan
- Jesus Christ: A Fresh Perspective
- President Obama Chastizes Wall Street Bankers for Accepting $18 Billion in Bonuse...
- A Christian's Perspective on the Historicity of Jesus Christ
6 Comments
Post a CommentA tax cut is when you get to KEEP more of your money. It is not a cost, not even to the government that grants it, unless you believe that it all their money, all the time.
I did some math too, as the sums involved are so large. If you took the entire $800 billion dollar stimulus package, and converted into $100 dollar bills, it would take more than 69 standard railroad box cars (6466 cubic feet each) to contain the money. This is a train of almost a mile in length.
The sums are so large that even experienced mathematicians and scientists have difficulty dealing with them. In fact, they created a notation called scientific notation just to deal with the problems of very large (and very small numbers).
Most calculators in the world cannot accept the entry of 1 trillion unless it is in scientific notation, and most people don't know how to use that notation.
Go Figure!
I went another route and assumed his math was right. Then figuring the cost of the Iraq war (600 billion) + the cost of the Bush tax cuts (2.1 trillion) that would give us a million a day since 27,000 BC. What god were we worshipping then?
Scary numbers..... Your last question is a good one.
Check your math again.
2009+4=2013
And there lies the rub. I have often told my friends that, if the government was really serious about paying off the deficit, they wouldn't send out tax returns. My friends always get that deer-in-the-headlights look and say, "Those bastards better give me my tax return..." What they and many others do not seem to understand is, just by signing a paper document, the government can, and does each time they pass new taxation legislation, alter the amount of taxes individuals get back from the government. They can also eliminate it altogether...