Not expecting a lot of "take" for this subject, but I've been struck lately by the apparent failure by most folks (not so much here, but in general) to fully apprehend what's going on with our money.
"U.S. cities to receive $445M in new security grants", reports the AP, with Chertoff chortling in the background. A biggish number, don't you think? Half a billion, almost. Wow. Now divide it by 50, for kicks and assuming that there's probably a city worthy of security in each state (we'll avoid denigrating Texas here, because I have friends there despite my better judgment). Not quite $10 million per state. Possibly less wow? On a good day, that's almost enough to pay the salaries of a few dozen GS-14 federal employees, or maybe paint a couple of bridges & replace some manhole covers.
Meanwhile, I think I read that we're spending $8 Billion per week in Iraq. Or maybe per month....doesn't matter, really; let's just accept that it's what someone once called "adult money". Last time I saw my calculator, that was better than sixteen times the whole grant pool that Chertoff is so proud of, and 800 times what, say, California will get, on average, for security (another place I'd rather ignore, but it's roughly the size of Iraq, I think, and, again, I have friends there....ever noticed how everything is roughly the size of California?). We're talking some serious disproportion here.
My point here is not that our current regime is wrong in its allocation of national resources; I don't think there are a lot of more or less rational people who would argue. The point is the degree, and the inability of most among the population to understand the orders of magnitude involved. Next time you bump into somebody at the water cooler, ask him or her what a billion really is. I'm betting that, above the fairly mundane figure of a million, they haven't got a clue, or at least have never really done the figuring enough to absorb just how big a number it is, relative to them. Nor, with their $40K median salary, do they understand just how paltry that million is, lottery hype notwithstanding.
My suggestion is that it's time to confect an alternative system of counting, to really bring home to folks what's going on. Sort of like the "Friedman" that someone came up with (although, having adopted Kossitude somewhat after that fact, I never did figure out what one was). I've toyed with the "Gates", but, frankly, it isn't particularly enlightening for the masses: that he would have had to earn tens of millions per year since Christ was (or wasn't) born is, in and of itself, a trifle eye-glazing.
So I'd like to turn this over to the collective imagination of the Kossuarium. It's a little tough to arouse real outrage about economic malfeasance in the bilions and trillions when the measuring stick is in the range of breadboxes and iPods and such. What say?