Green Stats: 5 Percent
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 12. 4.07
5% -- the amount of each sale TreeHugger fav Nau donates to environmental and humanitarian organizations working to create positive change. But how much is 5%?
$2,410 -- 5% of the median household income in the US.
$280,000,000,000 -- the amount we'd have if every US household gave 5%. That's four times the amount currently spent on education in this country.
$248.5 billion -- the amount of charitable giving in the US in 2004, totaling 2.1% of our GDP; if we'd given 5%, it would have been $688.5 billion, greater than the GDP of 177 countries across the world.
75% -- the amount of that charitable giving that came from individuals; 4.8% came from corporations, but, the median rate of giving among Fortune 500 companies is only...
0.07% -- which is more than 70 times less 5%. If all Fortune 500 companies gave 5%, it would total...
$19,200,000,000,000. Definitely enough to change the world. Watch the accompanying video at ::Nau via ::NotCot
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This doesn't make any sense at *all.* 5% of the WORLD economy isn't even NINETEEN TRILLION DOLLARS; 5% of the Fortune 500 definitely isn't either.
For reference, the world economy is less than 70 trillion dollars.
Wow, and if we spent half time time figuring all those numbers out and spent it instead on figuring out a way to use millitary funding to provide for education and environmental issues, we'd have solved all our problems.
No, you're right, creating a new tax on the poor is a way better idea than cutting the millitary budget and using that 65% of our GDP for good. I understand you'd like to keep blowing stuff up instead.
(end sarcasm)
$250 billion is A LOT...
Of course, more can be done, but that goes without saying.
And to think that tything is 7%.
And how many 5%'s does it take to swallow your entire income? 20. Every purchase I makes takes 8% on money after the government rapes me. FICA takes 7%. Income taxes take about 20%. The average home takes at least 25%. You should save 10%. And you haven't fed your family, paid for the car, the gas, the insurance, medical bills, electricity, etc.
No thanks. YOU give 5%. I gave at the office.
Dear Treehugger Readers,
Some of you have raised questions about a couple statistics highlighted in our recent animated short, “The Power of 5%.” Well, you’re right. We messed up. Big time. In one case by a couple orders of magnitude, in fact.
Our over-exuberance led us to report that 5% of the sales of all Fortune 500 companies would total $19 trillion dollars. In fact, the real number is something closer to $500 billion dollars. Definitely a smaller number but still large enough to affect positive change on a significant scale.
We have released a new version of the video with the correct figures. If anybody is interested in seeing the original sources for all of the statistics we’ve cited, please email us at share@nau.com and we’ll forward you the relevant document. We apologize and promise we will do everything in our power to make sure nothing like this happens again. That we guarantee 105%.
Sincerely,
Ian Yolles
Nau
Dear Treehugger Readers,
Some of you have raised questions about a couple statistics highlighted in our recent animated short, “The Power of 5%.” Well, you’re right. We messed up. Big time. In one case by a couple orders of magnitude, in fact.
Our over-exuberance led us to report that 5% of the sales of all Fortune 500 companies would total $19 trillion dollars. In fact, the real number is something closer to $500 billion dollars. Definitely a smaller number but still large enough to affect positive change on a significant scale.
We have released a new version of the video with the correct figures. If anybody is interested in seeing the original sources for all of the statistics we’ve cited, please email us at share@nau.com and we’ll forward you the relevant document. We apologize and promise we will do everything in our power to make sure nothing like this happens again. That we guarantee 105%.
Sincerely,
Ian Yolles
Nau