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Does this sound correct? What "a billion" means...?

What Is A Billion?

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did

a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

A billion days ago no one walked on the earth on two feet.

A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate the US

government is spending it.

Update:

Thanks to the folks who pointed out that this is from '75 (I didn't get the exact source and didn't do the math, so didn't know that). How frightening, that we're spending far, far more!

8 Answers

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  • Ron H
    Lv 6
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    A billion seconds ago it was 1975, this must be 15 years old.

    $2.568 Trillion for 2006, that is 7,035,616,438 an hour.

    That is 1 Billion every 8 Minutes!!!

    Is this from the Reagan era? Vaughn, are you trying to white wash the spending to make it look better? We are spending at 62 times this rate!

  • 1 decade ago

    A billion dollars gets spent much faster than that by our government now. If you want some perspective just take a look at the current US debt - but check back often because it changes constantly - it's calculated to the penny......

    Link below...

  • 1 decade ago

    How many billions in gold we have left? The govt has taken so much money, they need to print it out of thin air, and do often.

    While your on this topic, placing cash per second "earned" by the mot fortunate, vs per second earning of average, or even middle class people. Its nearly just as drastic.

  • 1 decade ago

    It is an interesting example to assist folks in visualizing what a "Billion" actually means.

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    It is NOT difficult at all to understand a billion 1,000,000,000... or what the ad agency correctly assumed.

    A hundred 10,000 is 1 million

    A thousand 10,000 is 10 million...

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    A billion seconds ago, it was 1975. Other than that, it sounds good.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    Yeah, that's pretty amazing isn't it? Would like to reduce government.

  • 1 decade ago

    i don't know. it's possible that this is correct, although the 2nd and 4th example kind of contradict each other.

  • 1 decade ago

    aaaaa.....okay.

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