1 Billion Dollars

I know, I know. Not the same as “One Million dollars but you get the point. The US government just approved a budget just over three Trillion (that’s right with a “T”!). I strikes me as odd that we see billions thrown around in the media all day but very few of us, upon any examination at all, seem to have any concept of what one billion really is, or what it encompasses. The most success that I have had in describing “one billion” to people is as follows:

Take for instance that a person at 20 years of age starts his career. This person works a regular day job, 8 hours per day, an average of 240 days of work each year. He gets a half hour for lunch and two 15 minute breaks.

• If all he or she does in their job is count out a 1 dollar bill every second of every working minute he would have to count bills at his job for 165.3 years to count to 1 billion 1 time.
• Considering that his descendants take on his life’s vocation, and that each person works from 20 years old to 55 years old do this every day (shoot me), this persons Great, Great Grandchild would be the one to finish the task almost in the middle of their career. This job would take 4.4 generations of work to complete.

What prompted me to write this was that every time I tell people this method of conceptualizing “one Billion” they are floored. I told the story to a group of gents at lunch yesterday and I was immediately asked if this every got me any action with the ladies. I told him I really doubted it. Once a nerd always a nerd I guess.