{"id":103159,"date":"2024-09-25T12:53:46","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T16:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.owegopennysaver.com\/PS\/?p=103159"},"modified":"2024-09-25T12:53:46","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T16:53:46","slug":"the-old-coot-wants-to-see-the-zeros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.owegopennysaver.com\/PS\/2024\/09\/25\/the-old-coot-wants-to-see-the-zeros\/","title":{"rendered":"The Old Coot wants to see the zeros"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">By Merlin Lessler &#8212;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s time to bring back the zeros. These zeros \u2013 000 and 000 and 000 and 000. All twelve!&nbsp;The print media writes things like, \u201cThe senate passed a $1.2 trillion spending bill today.\u201d&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We don\u2019t blink an eye. What is a trillion? More than a billion, but what is it really? How about if they ended the shortcut and put it out there as &#8211; $1,200,000,000,000? That might catch our eye. It might make us wonder how we can afford it. How much more will \u201cwe\u201d be taxed?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Even the TV and radio media dropped the ball. $1.2 trillion. Ho Hum. How about saying, twelve hundred piles of billion-dollar bundles. Or better yet, twelve hundred thousand piles of million dollar bundles. It might perk our interest a little more.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">They do this type of clarification all the time with the weather! \u201cIt\u2019s going to be 86 degrees today, but the heat\/humidity index will make it feel more like 100.\u201d Or, \u201cIt\u2019s going to be 16 degrees tomorrow morning, but with the wind chill factor it will feel like five below.\u201d&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Once the money that Washington and Albany threw around got to be more than a million a disconnect occurred between the spenders, and the people that pay the bill. A billion here, a billion there. We hardly knew the difference between a billion and a million after a while. It didn\u2019t dawn on us often enough, that a billion is one-thousand million.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Line up 1,000 millionaires, each sitting on a pile of one million dollar bills, take a picture, and that\u2019s what a billion looks like. A trillion is 1,000 times as much as that. Now you\u2019ve got the average American\u2019s attention. Oh yes, we need the media to pay as much attention to the politicians\u2019 love of spending as they do trying to scare us about the weather, which is a trillion times less important.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Comments? \u2013 Send to <a href=\"mailto:mlessler7@gmail.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mlessler7@gmail.com<\/a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Merlin Lessler &#8212; It\u2019s time to bring back the zeros. These zeros \u2013 000 and 000 and 000 and 000. All twelve!&nbsp;The print media&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":82349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Old Coot wants to see the zeros - Owego Pennysaver Press<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.owegopennysaver.com\/PS\/2024\/09\/25\/the-old-coot-wants-to-see-the-zeros\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Old Coot wants to see the zeros - Owego Pennysaver Press\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Merlin Lessler &#8212; It\u2019s time to bring back the zeros. 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