A Thousand Million

It's my impression that most people don't really understand the difference between a million and a billion. When the government throws around figures that include billions, I don't think most people truly appreciate that a billion is a thousand million. To a lot of people, a billion sounds like 2 million or 20 million or 200 million and not a thousand million. Some people talk about streamlining the government by cutting programs that cost a couple of million and ignore programs that cost billions, and I think that either they don't understand that a billion is a thousand million or they believe that whomever they're talking to doesn't understand that a billion is a thousand million.

I propose that from now on the government refer to a billion of anything as a thousand million just to make sure everyone understands how much a billion really is. If the war in Iraq costs 100 to 200 billion dollars, let's just call it 100-to-200-times-a-thousand-million dollars just to be sure we all know what we're talking about. If cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina costs 200 to 300 billion dollars, let's just call it 200-to-300-times-a-thousand-million dollars and take it from there.

Dammit.

Update: I was more timely with this post than I knew.