Do the math!

I read the following quote by Jim Kunstler here:

"August 13, 2003. California is now so bankrupt -- over $34 billion in deficit -- that it's hard to conceive how it may ever climb out of its hole. Seems to me that California, by defaulting on some of its own massive obligations, could singlehandedly turn the bond market from a rout into a train-wreck, perhaps even setting in motion the mythic cascading chain of failures that would melt away the global credit daydream like sunlight beaming on a claque of vampires caught out of their graves by mischance at dawn."

Well let's see. $34 billion of debt divided into some 35 (?) million people...(and I used my $2500 better-than-NASA-had-in-1969 computer to do this extremely complex calculation but it is actually just arithmetic and there are even people who can do it in their head by knocking off zeros)...yields some $971 per person. Call it a grand. One thousand dollars ($1000.00) per Californian including babies and the senile. Does not sound like a real crisis deal to me. I think that those Cwazy Californians will be able to pay off their debt. (Unless they want to default like the State of Washington did when it came to paying off nuclear power plants.)

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I have an astute friend who got me to thinking that every time you see a set of figures in print you should Do the math! The reporters who provide figures ---hard data!--- rarely if ever (Gretchen Morgenstern and Floyd Norris of the NYT are two such rare exceptions, if I remember correctly) Do the math! And sometimes if one does Do the math! you reveal some surprising relationships. Such as that the California state debt of $1000 per capita --- not even remotely equal considering inflation to this 1882 Gold Certificate:

(image courtesy Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)

--- and does not appear to be such a deep pit out of which to climb. A matter about which to be concerned? Of course. Cause for contemplation of the abyss? I don't think so.

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Do the math! will be a continuing feature of this Blog. There are examples every week in the media about which to chuckle. Most of them breathlessly present a dramatic number without creating a relationship to show the importance or triviality of the number. And I promise, this Blog's Do the math! feature will never, ever go beyond addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Because I can't. Even with a computer.