Like most folks, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the staggeringly large sums that are used in the world of government and business finance these days. The Economist magazine reported this week that "AOL Time Warner is to write off as much as $60 billion in the first quarter thanks to new rules over accounting for 'goodwill'." Those are US dollars, so the potential "write off" is CAN $96 billion, or about enough money to pay for all BC provincial health expenditures for about 10 years.

Comparisons help to create some kind of understandable perspective when the numbers are beyond ordinary experience. There are two useful hints for dealing with big numbers. First, determine whether the number applies only once or whether it goes on year after year. Second, compare it to something else, like to the BC per person cost by dividing it by 4 million.

Try the fast ferry fiasco as an example. If every penny spent on the fast ferries was a loss, then it would be equal to about a $100 bill for every person in the province. That is bad, but is it better or worse than giving the top 8,000 income earners in BC a combined total of over $200 million in tax cuts or an amount equal to $50 for every person in the province - not just one time, but forever - year after year after year?

While the AOL Time Warner write off tops the list, one publication estimates that the new US accounting rule dealing with overvalued assets will require the write off of US $1.86 trillion.

Keep that figure in mind the next time you hear someone say government should behave just like business. Of course, that figure is so enormous it is like trying to understand the distance to the nearest star. Some local media are criticizing the former government for spending $16 million on buses so as to try to have cleaner air. Even if all of that spending were a loss, it would equal $4 for each person in the province, or relative to the US corporate write downs, it would equal less than 0.001 of one percent. Still a lot of money in your pocket or mine, but a pittance relative to the amounts thrown around (and lost) in the corporate world every day.

None of this is to excuse government errors, but the corporate apologists that currently rule BC ought to keep these comparisons in mind as their errors start to be tallied.