Sunday, July 02, 2006

Buffett's gift: how much is that in Magic booster packs?

Warren Buffett, the world’s greatest investor and second-richest man, is donating 85 percent of his $44 billion fortune to charity, with $31 billion going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

My analysis: his total charitable gift is enough money to:

    • give $126.46 per US resident or,
    • give 1,281 Jack-In-The-Box Big Texas Cheeseburgers with extra pickle and onion for every person in Texas, or
    • give $5.84 to every living human being, or
    • pay 1/22nd of the entire credit-card balances of the entire US, or
    • build 149,600 Grave Digger monster trucks from the ground up, or
    • pay 1/231,550th of the entire nation's mortgage debt, or
    • double current spending on AIDS research for 25 years, or
    • buy median-value homes for a quarter-million Americans, or
    • make 24,933 episodes of Arrested Development, or
    • fit 2.3 million homes with huge solar panels, or
    • give away 249,000 four-year free-ride scholarships to the University of Houston, or
    • pay 1/20th OR 1/25th of the cost of the Iraq war - depending on who you believe and how long we stay, or
    • give 910,000 teens a free 4-year community college education, or
    • provide health insurance for every single uninsured kid in the US.
All numbers are back-of-the-envelope calculations, of course.

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