And another reader favorite — America (and more) by the dollars.
It’s just a matter of time ’til everyone with a computer will be shopping for things on Amazon. Recently, a computer scientist in Zurich crunched the numbers and informed the world that Amazon boasts the availability of 479 million products at an average of $26.86 per item. If you wanted to buy just one of every item, it would cost you $12.9 billion. I wonder how much that computer scientist earns a year. That researcher is just one of the 230,800 employees working for Amazon.
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How much do you think the typical chief executive officer earns a year? That question was asked to 1,200 Americans in a recent Stanford poll. The average response was $1 million annually. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! The real answer is 10 times that amount — $10 million dollars a year. Where do we apply for that job? (The executive job — not the pollsters).
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How much money is your vote worth? With several primaries still on the calendar, the total numbers and dollars are still being counted. Here are some totals: Marco Rubio spent about $153 per vote, and Jeb Bush spent an average of $368 per vote.
Now catch this: Dr. Ben Carson spent the most of any candidate. It cost his campaign $795 for each of the just 76,000 people who voted for him. The costs of the campaigns of Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and John Kasich will not be available until all of their totals are in — and for Trump, there is no doubt that the biggest spending is yet to come.
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Football super-stars receive salaries that are in the millions of dollars. Of course, there is always the possibility of being injured, but the players figure the risks are worth it based on those super-sized paychecks. There is, however, one man involved in the sport who, unless he falls down a flight of stairs or gets run over by a car, receives maxi-size income without the risk of injury on the field. That man is league commissioner Roger Goodell.
This year’s numbers are almost in, but we only have to take a peek at 2014 to learn that Mr. G earned $34.1 million dollars in salary and bonuses in 2014. Now that’s another job I would like. Where do I apply?
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Americans spend lots of bucks on his products but very few wanted to spend the cost of a movie ticket on a flick about his life. Half a year ago the movie, Steve Jobs, opened with some pretty good reviews and a Rotten Tomatoes score of 86. Despite a production cost of $30 million, it closed after five weeks with a gross of less than $17 million. The total box office receipts are roughly what Apple earns every 38 minutes.
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How much? I just saw an ad that informs us that the U.S. debt increases by $2.4 billion. That’s a billion — with a B — dollars every day. President Obama has added nearly $9 trillion to the federal debt. He has increased it by a whopping 81 percent — more than any other president in history.
I am StanG
