Where do I sign?
A reader writes:
The Business Section Editor of the St. Petersburg Times asked readers for their ideas on how they would fix the economy. Here's the winner’s offering...There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $3 million apiece severance with the following stipulations:(1) They leave their jobs. Forty million job openings -- Unemployment fixed.
(2) They all buy NEW American cars. Forty million cars ordered -- Auto Industry fixed.
(3) They either buy a house or pay off their mortgage -- Housing Crisis fixed
Total commitment - $120 billion.
| Posted at 11:26 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (10)
There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $3 million apiece severance...Total commitment - $120 billion.
40 million times $3 million is actually $120 TRILLION. But what's a factor of 1000 error between friends?
Posted by fred friendly | April 10, 2009 12:42 PM
Wow. And the newspaper picked it as the winner. With math skills like that, one wonder why papers are in decline.
Posted by Snards | April 10, 2009 12:50 PM
Must be the old British usage. But you could sail any large number past this Congress.
Posted by Morbius | April 10, 2009 1:04 PM
But you could sail any large number past this Congress.
Yeah, obviously time to send in more tea bags.
Posted by fred friendly | April 10, 2009 1:20 PM
Snopes.
Just like the Tram [rimshot], it looks like the original estimate has tripled.
Posted by Garage Wine | April 10, 2009 1:46 PM
saw this somewhere else , but it was $1million a piece...wouldn't that suffice to meet all of those "demands"??
Posted by dr | April 10, 2009 2:12 PM
A million millions is a trillion. Math error - big time.
Make it a million, buy the house and the car and pay taxes on your new money and total cost would be a trillion...
Posted by jeff | April 10, 2009 3:13 PM
"actually $120 TRILLION"
Hey, that's only about 5 Trams, 2 SoWas and a couple of soccer stadia worth.
I'd chalk it up to decimal point mis-placment.
Posted by Steve | April 10, 2009 4:47 PM
Total commitment - $120 billion.
40 million times $3 million is actually $120 TRILLION.
JK: Now we know how the news media keeps getting sucked in by the smart growthers and global warmers.
They can't even do grade school math!
That implies they failed grade school science too.
Thanks
JK
Posted by jim karlock | April 11, 2009 12:35 AM
Newspaper arithmetic fail.
Posted by MJ | April 12, 2009 7:44 PM