"We all will be millionaires someday."
James Henderson
The above quote came in a conversation when I was in high school. I forgot what steered the conversation towards money (maybe it had something to do with hockey salary). Seriously, don't we all wish to be millionaires, or even billionaires, at one time or another. James later added "all of us will earn more than one million dollars over our lifetimes". Of course, his definition of a millionaire in this conversation is not the most common one. These days, with so many large dollar figure being thrown around in the news (usually by our government in a campaign that is not really a campaign or by owners of sporting clubs trying to lure the "best" talent.). The dollar amount mentioned in those announcements are often beyond our realm.
Such so many large figures being thrown around, it is difficult to fathom that behind those figures are real money. The following is an attempt to make some of the huge figures less enormous. I guess I can say something about politicians throwing taxpayers' money around as if the money belongs to them, but that would be another topic for another time. (Besides, this being tax season, who wants to hear that their tax money is being thrown around like confetti.)
The federal surplus for the last fiscal year is about $9 billion. Huge sum for sure, but if we do a little calculation, we can see that each citizen contributes about $300 to that surplus, which is less than $1 a day. If all Canadians, regardless of age, spend $1 fewer (for example, buy one fewer cup of coffee or one fewer can of pop) per day, we can save more than $10 billion. I'm sure our government can find ways to save $1 extra per day for every Canadian citizen (or not).
Yes, we do have a large surplus, but the cloud of the debt still hovers over us. However, the country can become debt free if we all do a little saving. Assuming that our population remains constant (quite unrealistic), the interest rate is 10% (this may be a little high), and our government balances the budget for the next 25 years, we can pay off the entire debt if each Canadian spends about $4.7 less each day for the next 25 years (with population growth, the amount can be even smaller). As an aisde, if we want to be more aggressive and try to pay the debt off by this time next year, all we need to do is to have each of us slash our spending by $47 per day for the next year.
The largest payroll in professional sports (in North America) is about $200 million (US). That is how much George Steinbrenner spends to assemble the much beloved/hated New York Yankees baseball club. Sure, this is a sum most of us won't accumulate in our lifetime, but the people of New York can spend more than this amount just by having all New Yorkers riding the subway once per day for 2 weeks, since New York has a about population of about 8 million, and a subway ride costs $2 in New York.
These days, the highest paid professional athletes earn more than $20 million US per year (forget about sponsorships and endorsements for now. The amount of time they actually spend "working" varies, since the number of games/practices varies from sport to sport, but most league seasons last 6 to 8 months. It would take 1000 people making $40,000(US) a year just to match the salary of one athelete (since most athletes receive paycheques during the season only, they would earn double if they work all year). It is great downer, for sure. (Yes, I know that I can use this to argue athletes are overpaid, but who would turn down an opportunity to earn millions playing games?)
The above are still large sums, no matter how you see it (unless you are Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, of course), but these numbers can be divided into dollar figures that are more in our range.