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One way politicians and the media manipulate low-IQ voters, the gullible, and liberals is by tossing HUGE NUMBERS about.

 

ZOMG, the B-2 bomber costs $1.2 billion each.

 

Well, sort of, if you include R&D, program development, ongoing maintenance and upgrades, and consider that they produced 21 units.  Per aircraft billed cost was about $600 million.

 

Whereas, 1662 units into the Boeing 777 fleet, those cost about $400 million.  They aren’t radar invisible and they don’t carry 50,000 lbs of bombs.

 

But boy does that number sound HUGE.  You should be offended!

The below article points out an F35 costs about the same as new executive jet.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2013/11/22/what-planes-cost-and-why-550-million-is-cheap-for-a-new-bomber/?sh=6f641f5155b2

 

We can step back to the 90s with the Clinton’s push for national health care.

 

The marketing was that “40 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured.”

 

That was 15% of the population.  Or, on par with most of Europe.

 

Now: Define “underinsured.”  I was 24, and my logic was this:  If I get hurt at school, the school is probably paying.  If I get hurt in my car, I have car insurance.  If I get hurt on duty with the Guard, the military is paying.  I’m 24, in top physical condition, with no family history of cancer or heart disease, and we typically live into our 90s or better. If I did something stupid and broke an arm, out of pocket would be pricey, but cheaper than a year’s worth of insurance. Was I going to break an arm every year?

 

I didn’t feel “underinsured.”  They defined it for me, against my wishes, and used me for their marketing.

 

It was also an instantaneous statistic, not a floating average. They included anyone between jobs, just entering the market, or rich enough not to need it. They included people in the VA and Medicare systems, since many of them don’t actually carry insurance. The actual number of people who had no access to any form of care was under 3%.  IOW, BETTER than most nations in Europe.

 

 (Remember when Bill held up a blue card and said that would solve everyone’s problems?  And the Democrats cheered? And we never saw the card again?)

 

Sure was a big number, though.

 

Remember 0bamacare was pimped because Americans were paying 18% of their GDP toward medical care?

 

Guess what the Dutch were paying in a much smaller nation with smaller infrastructure? 16%.

 

Guess what the US is paying now, WITH 0bamacare? 

About 18%.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184968/us-health-expenditure-as-percent-of-gdp-since-1960/

 

There have been 615,000 Covids deaths in the US. What a huge number!

Assuming a steady state population of 331 million, that’s .18% of the population. Or, an entire order of magnitude lower than that charlatan Neil Ferguson panic-predicted.

 

But it’s not a steady state population. It’s slowly growing, and there’s ongoing replacement. And of course, several jurisdictions have finally gone through all the tags and have started reducing that number by about 25%. Expect more to follow. At the end of the day, plain old Influenza A kills 20,000-100,000 people per year.  So, this is about 2-3 times as bad as a bad flu year (since the earliest assigned Covids cases in the US are now in October of 2019).

 

That’s what the numbers show.  Pardon my language, but you shit your pants, panicked, and trashed the economy over a fucking cold, because you heard a REALLY BIG NUMBER!

When someone throws a big number out there:

 

Stop.

 

Think.

 

Think about what the number represents.

 

Realize that it is almost certainly adjusted to their most favorable position.  “Up to 40 million Americans are underinsured.” Meaning, it’s probably fewer, and again, define “underinsured.” What criteria are being used?

But the number in context with something else.

Don’t panic.