A Dallas Morning News blog notes that “A billion dollars isn’t what it used to be.”

Boy, howdy.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2013/09/a-billion-dollars-isnt-what-it-used-to-be.html/

It talks about a list of billionaires in which the starting point now stands at $1.3 billion. T. Boone Pickens, the one-time Panhandle oil-and-gas magnate, didn’t make the grade. He is worth a “mere” $950 million, according to Forbes magazine, which did the survey.

The blog takes note of Pickens’s reaction, which is that he is “doing fine.” Pickens also said his $1 billion in charitable giving is more than his net worth.

This item brings to mind just how much inflation has devalued money.

I remember when Aristotle Onassis died in 1975. The Greek shipping magnate was considered then to be the world’s richest, or second-richest man — depending on who did the figuring.

Onassis’s net worth at the time of his death 38 years ago? It was around $500 million.

In today’s terms, the value of Onassis’s wealth would be considered chump change when compared to the ledger sheets produced by the likes of, say, Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.

Or, as the late Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois once said about the cost of prosecuting the Vietnam War, “A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon we’re talking real money.”