Letter: What we could do with $100 billion
(Russ Rader/Insurance Institute for Highway Safety file photo via AP) A BMW 3 series, left, Honda Accord, Toyota Prius V and a Kia Optima are seen at the The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Vehicle Research Center in Ruckersville, Va.
Like most people, I have a hard time comprehending exactly what $100 billion looks like. Just $1 billion equals $1,000 million. That is still a bigger number than I can understand. So I measured it in electric cars.
Turns out, just $1 billion equals a little more than 33,000 modestly priced electric cars (at $30,000 a pop). This in turn means that $100 billion equals 3 million electric cars. In 2017, there were 2.3 million vehicles registered in Utah.
Now I am not suggesting the LDS Church replace all the vehicles in Utah, even though they could. But what if the church paid a tithe to the people of Utah? Ten percent of this fund ($10 billion) could purchase 330,000 electric cars. Replacing 330,000 combustion engines along the Wasatch Front would make an enormous difference in the air we all share.
Katie Ward, Salt Lake City
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