Basic Math. Learn it, Use it, Love it.

I've received this internet forward at least 5 times now by people who really should know better:

I'm against the $85 BILLION bailout of AIG. Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a "We Deserve It" dividend. To make the math simple, let's assume there are 200,000,000 bona fide U.S. citizens, aged 18+.

Yes, let's make the math simple...

Our population is about 301 million counting every man, woman and child.

So, 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up. Now, divide 200 million, 18+ adults into $85 billion - that equals $425,000.00 each! Yes, my plan is to give that $425,000 to every adult as a "We Deserve It" dividend.

And it goes on and on and on trumping up this grand fantasy. But really, do people not understand basic math anymore? Or is this part of that "New Math" that kids are being taught these days? Really? $425,000?

Whoever thought this up is a genius, because I've heard this mentioned on several talk radio shows... and by genius, I mean in an evil sort of way. The kind of genius that could create something like this and have millions of people buy into, pass it around, and think how great a plan it is, without doing something as simple as basic math.

Unlike the originator of this piece of drek, I CAN do simple math. 85,000,000,000 divided among 200,000,000 people comes to $425.00. Yes, four HUNDRED and 25 dollars. Even the big housing bailout plan that will cost the American taxpayer a whopping $820 Billion only comes out to $4100.00 per person. And that's assuming a distribution to only 200,000,000 people.

Using teh maths, we can easly multiply and find that for every one of those 200,000,000 people to get $425,000.00, the government would have to hand out $85,000,000,000,000.00. That's 85 TRILLION dollars. Trillion, with a T. That's 6 times the 2007 Gross Domestic Product of the U.S.A. That's roughly 1.5 times the 2007 GDP of the ENTIRE WORLD.

In 2007, the ENTIRE WORLD had a GDP of only 56 Trillion.

So please, think before you click Send. Do some basic math. Snopes and Google are your friends. No, there are not little missing red-headed girls stolen from a Wal-Mart in South Carolina. No, The Colonel does not raise an army of headless, featherless chickens using genetic manipulation. And no, $85 Billion spread among a falsely estimated 200 Million people is NOT $425,000. Not even close.