Perspective from the 19th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write. I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf. The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie. And it is where you want to be on a golf course.
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Note: This is the first of two blogs in which I share incredible statistics honed from Google, which is infused by AI. True? Who knows? I hope so.
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A headline in the New York Times caught my attention and prompted me to try to understand what a “billion” really is.
The headline: California May Tax Its Billionaires. The Billionaires Are Fighting Back
In a random run-through of newspapers I read every morning, beyond this headline, I lost count of the number of times I read the word “billion.” Let’s just say many.
We hear a lot these days about the rich folks who have several billion dollars in their bank accounts. Phil Knight. Elon Musk. Others.
Can they afford higher taxes in California and elsewhere? Of course, the answer is “yes.” But, in California and elsewhere, they don’t want to pay more, so they fight or leave the state.
Regarding one name above – Phil Knight – credit should do where it deserves to go. Which is to give Knight and his wife due credit for making huge multi-million-dollar donations to fund academic and athletic programs at their alma mater, the University of Oregon.
As for Musk, who knows what he does with his money.
Still, to find out more about what a “billion” means, I consulted Google, as I often do. Here is a summary of some common real-world examples to visualize how big a billion is:
- Counting out loud: If you count every single second without stopping, it takes about 31.7 years to reach 1 billion. Incredible!
- A billion seconds: 1 billion seconds is equal to about 31.68 years (compared to 1 million seconds, which is only about 11.5 days). Again, incredible!
- Human Population: Countries such India and China each have more than 1.4 billion people; the total population of Africa is more than 1.2 billion.
- Insects on Earth: There are estimated to be roughly 1 billion ants alive for every single human being on earth. Who does this counting?
- Stars in a Galaxy: The Milky Way galaxy contains roughly 100 billion to 400 billion stars. Again, who does this counting?
- Internet & Apps: Several major global platforms — such as WhatsApp, TikTok, and YouTube — have crossed 1 billion active users.
- Websites: There are more than 1 billion websites on the internet.
- Time comparison in currency: $1 million in 1-dollar bills weighs about one ton; $1 billion in 1-dollar bills weighs about 1,000 tons and would require a massive storage space or heavy-duty trucks to haul.
Another question persists. As noted above, who knows all this stuff on Google and how do they know what they know? For example, how does someone know that there are one billion ants alive for every single human being on earth? Who counts? And how do they count?
Now, aren’t you glad you know all this? Probably a billion times glad, right?
