$770 million for Food Aid
Last Thursday President Bush called for spending $770 million more on food aid, just hours after ONE delivered its petition from over 100,000 Americans calling for action. Certainly ONE cannot claim sole credit, the media coverage definitly put the focus on this issue, but Americans clamoring for action and continued pressure to do more for the poor were definite factors in this new pledge.
As a math and economic person, I like to try to quantify the value of these petitions and this movement to show the value that each member of ONE, the value of ONE voice, in this movement. So the most basic calculation is just divide 770,000,000 by 100,000 to get $7,700 per petitioner. Not bad! Of course, there are more than a million members of ONE who have helped build this movement, so crediting a million members of this movement or even 10 million members of this movement to account for unofficial members and you get $770 or $77 per signature.
The last, and smallest, figure is probably the best estimate–but consider it compared to the value of alternative uses of your time. You might get $2 per person at a bake sale or $10 per person at a fund raiser. By getting 10 friends to join ONE and have each get 5 friends to join one, you have generated $4,697 worth of food aid. Of course, it’s best to just try two or more of these worthwhile activities! (I’ve worked on all 3.)
If the conventional wisdom is correct, I lost 3/4ths of the readers with those two calculations. But if you are still reading check out these links:
Bush proposes $770 million for world food crisis – Yahoo News
Transcript of Bush’s remarks – Washington Post
and a Video of Bush’s speech – Washington Post
September 22nd, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Nice article it interesting. Nice reading your article i like reading your blog.