{"id":3548,"date":"2013-09-19T21:09:14","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T21:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=3548"},"modified":"2013-09-19T21:09:14","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T21:09:14","slug":"a-billion-here-a-billion-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3548","title":{"rendered":"A billion here, a billion there &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>A Dallas Morning News blog notes that &#8220;A billion dollars isn&#8217;t what it used to be.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Boy, howdy.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com\/2013\/09\/a-billion-dollars-isnt-what-it-used-to-be.html\/<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t make the grade. He is worth a &#8220;mere&#8221; $950 million, according to Forbes magazine, which did the survey.<\/p>\n<p>The blog takes note of Pickens&#8217;s reaction, which is that he is &#8220;doing fine.&#8221; Pickens also said his $1 billion in charitable giving is more than his net worth.<\/p>\n<p>This item brings to mind just how much inflation has devalued money.<\/p>\n<p>I remember when Aristotle Onassis died in 1975. The Greek shipping magnate was considered then to be the world&#8217;s richest, or second-richest man &#8212; depending on who did the figuring.<\/p>\n<p>Onassis&#8217;s net worth at the time of his death 38 years ago? It was around $500 million. <\/p>\n<p>In today&#8217;s terms, the value of Onassis&#8217;s wealth would be considered chump change when compared to the ledger sheets produced by the likes of, say, Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.<\/p>\n<p>Or, as the late Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois once said about the cost of prosecuting the Vietnam War, &#8220;A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon we&#8217;re talking real money.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Dallas Morning News blog notes that &#8220;A billion dollars isn&#8217;t what it used to be.&#8221; 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&#8217;t make the grade. He is worth a &#8220;mere&#8221; $950 million, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3548\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A billion here, a billion there &#8230;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[443,1654,1763,4495],"class_list":["post-3548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aristotle-onassis","tag-everett-dirksen","tag-forbes-magazine","tag-t-boone-pickens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}