A Rounding Error

Just for the sake of comparison, let’s take a quick look at the math on a couple of current issues. The highly protested AIG bonuses come to roughly $167,000,000 and have occupied center stage for over a week. Everyone in congress has had his moment in the limelight to bloviate and fuel the fires of class envy. It is a subject which has occupied the press to the exclusion of issues of actual importance. Since it has been out of the glare of public exposure and shielded by the outrage of the bonuses, little attention has been paid to the Obama climate plan. He has it all figured out and presented the bill in advance. It comes to $2.3 trillion.

To attempt to establish the relationship I am going to put the numbers against the left margin so you can see it more plainly:

$2,300,000,000,000 ------- for the costs of the climate change initiative
------ $167,000,000 ------- for the AIG bonuses.

Numerical relationships are most popularly expressed as either a percentage or a fraction. This percentage is expressed as 0.0000726%. For those who see fractions more clearly, it is 1/13,772.

A real life example to illustrate the comparison would involve showing your outrage over the bonuses by participating in a demonstration at the home of an AIG executive and shouting, screaming, and waving threatening placards for a full eight hour day. To achieve an equivalent protest at the White House over the proposed climate change debacle would require the same eight hour expenditure of your time and energy every single day for 113 years!

Now, we go to your local convenience store and top off your gas tank, pick up a bag of chips and a Coke and the tab comes to $19.98. You toss a twenty on the counter and tell the clerk to put the 2 cents in the jar for the next guy. Fundamentally, this is a rounding error. It is also .001% or 1/1000 of the transaction. That means it is 13.8 times more significant than the AIG/climate legislation relationship. You are now free to devote your time to figuring out how to get another twenty.

I would hope this enables you to see that all the hoopla over these bonuses is merely a dodge to abrogate a valid existing contract and accelerate a fictitious class struggle within our population. Having the media consumed by this relatively minor issue offers a smoke screen to hide a far more insidious attack on the public treasury. It also provides a perfect example of a “bloodless coup.” Destroy a country without dropping a bomb or firing a shot; what a concept.

In His abiding love,

Cecil Moon