I think people have problems understanding big numbers, and this is illustrated by the current uproar over the bonuses that AIG payed out.
AIG payed out 165 Million dollars in bonuses.
AIG has taken in around 130 Billion in bailout money from the government.
So that is like… LESS THAN ONE PERCENT. If you gave someone a dollar, would you be real upset if they wasted less than a penny of that? No, I don’t think you would.
I think that the problem here is that people assume anything that ends in “illion” is the same. Maybe Billion is a little bigger than Million, but not much. Oh what is that that you are saying? It is actually a thousand times bigger?
It is the same thing with earmarks. People are getting worked up over millions of dollars of earmarks in a trillions of dollar budget.
I don’t know who to blame. The media? Middle school math teachers? But come on. At least understand that there is a difference between millions and billions.
1 million = 1,000,000
1 billion = 1,000,000,000
1 trillion = 1,000,000,000,000
That’s a big difference, people.
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I actually heard something on NPR the other day about how the human brain literally can’t process the size difference between, say, 400 billion and 700 billion dollars. Sure, one is almost twice as large as the other, but they are both just “really, really big”, so the standard response is to just say “whatever” to the extra 300 billion.
Republicans are apparently having a really tough time with this in trying to emphasize with the public how much money Obama is actually proposing. But people are just so numb to bailouts and stimulus packages that are already in the high billions, that when 1 trillion comes along, no one cares.
Pretty fascinating stuff, really.
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“the human brain literally can’t process the size difference between, say, 400 billion and 700 billion dollars.”
So does that mean Smackie isn’t human? Finally the proof I’ve been waiting for…
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Nathan Reply:
March 18th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Obviously I’m a frog…
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But if you had given that person the 1 dollar because they had blown the other $100 they had at the casino, you might be pissed if they even gambled 1 penny at a casino.
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Nathan Reply:
March 18th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Touche.
The point was more that people don’t understand big numbers. I agree that AIG is ridiculous.
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some of us even have trouble with small numbers.
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http://xkcd.com/558/
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Nathan Reply:
March 20th, 2009 at 7:28 am
I just saw that and was about to post it.
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