Friday, March 12 2010

THE EDITOR: We have heard, time and time again that the Manning administration has spent over 300 billion dollars since they became the government of Trinidad and Tobago. It sure sounds like a lot of money but for the layman like myself exactly how much money is it? To get a physical feel of that much money I did some calculations.

If someone is born today and inherits 300 billion dollars at the moment of birth and that person lives for 60 years, that person would have the spending power of 13.7 million dollars per day for every day of the next 60 years! This figure does not include interest if the money is lodged at a bank.

Let’s look at it another way. If 300 billion dollars are converted to one hundred dollar bills and put into bundles of 100 notes, we would have 22,500,000 bundles, If we average a bundle to be 3/4 of an inch thick, if we pile these bundles one on top of the other, the pile of blue notes would rise several miles into the sky!

And finally, if 300 billion dollars are converted to one hundred dollar bills, we would have three billion blue notes. A hundred dollar bill is six inches long, so if these blue notes were laid lengthways, end to end, the line would be 18 billion inches long. Dividing by 63,360 to convert to miles, this line of blue notes would run for 284,090 miles. The distance from the earth to the moon is 238,857 miles, therefore 300 billion dollars converted to hundred dollar bills and laid lengthways in a line would run from the earth to the moon and come one fifth of the way back to earth!

If this makes it easier for you to get a grasp of this vast amount of money, the questions we must now ask ourselves are, if after the expenditure of such an incredible amount of money, how many of us can say that life has really gotten better? How many new roads, new schools or individual sporting facilities have we gotten in our communities? Do we get the same “we do not have any vehicles” excuse when we call the police stations to ask for help? Have we a better standard of health services than ten years ago? Has our water supply situation improved? Has the Manning administration spent on infrastructure that satisfies the needs of the majority of the people? Or have they spent it on window dressing such as the Hyatt Hotel and other shiny buildings in Port- of-Spain, the Performing Arts centre a luxurious palace and a flag?

Have we, the shareholders of Trinidad and Tobago gotten value for 300 billion dollars? To answer these questions objectively, we need to take off our political-party coloured glasses and look at the reality of the bigger picture.

LARRY KHAN

via e-mail