How far will $1 billion go?

On Friday, April 21, the Lodi News-Sentinel reported that the State of California has allocated $20.6 billion toward housing homelessness since 2018-19. But despite this influx of cash, during that time, the number of unhoused people in the state has increased by nearly a third. Doesn’t this sound like Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity i.e., keep doing the same thing, but expect a different result?

With this kind of expenditure, I have asked many people the question “How much is just one billion dollars? I have not found one person who can even come close to telling me the correct answer. Many calculators cannot even let you enter that number into it. My iPhone 14 cannot.

For the purpose of illustrating just how much one billion dollars is, so us voters can vote on propositions that cost billions of dollars, here is something to think about. Let’s say you open a small business on School Street in downtown Lodi. But you mismanaged it so bad, you lost $1000 per day. Most people would say you are not managing your business very well.

But grandma put just $1 billion dollars in your savings account. How long could you stay in business?

Think about that answer for a minute. The answer is; you would still be in business for over 2,500 years. And then your heirs would have over 200 years left to still stay in business. I wonder how many of our legislators could answer this question?

When we vote on up-coming propositions, I hope this helps you to consider just how much $1 billion dollars is, and what the fiscal impact will be on California. STAN SOGSTI Lodi