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PCI is offering a billion dollars, how much is that?

Billion - fluorescent Neon Sign on brickwall Front view

Poarch Band of Creek Indians is offering the state a billion dollars for a state-guaranteed monopoly on its gambling operations and allowing it to expand its casinos to include Birmingham and a yet unnamed location in North Alabama.

How much is a billion dollars?

PCI gaming, using revenues from its gaming operations in Alabama, last year purchased the Sands Casino in Pennsylvania for an astounding $1.3 billion. The tribe then announced it would immediately start more than $250 million in renovations on the casino for a total of $1.5 billion.

New nonprofit wants to provide facts about Poarch Creek Indians

According to Forbes, there are only 540 billionaires in the United States. Collectively, they control about $2.4 trillion, which is over three percent of all the wealth in the country.

A billion is one thousand million (1,000,000,000), but that doesn’t tell the whole story.

For an individual earning $100,000 per year, it would take ten years to make $1 million. To reach $1 billion would require that person save every penny they earned for 10,000 years.

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The combined money that PCI offers the state and its payment for the Sands Casino nearly equals the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, of the world’s 13 poorest countries.

A billion dollars in stacked dollar bills would reach over 400,000 feet in height, poking out into space, which starts at 330,000 feet.

Visualising Just How Much A Billion Dollars Is

The length of one billion one-dollar bills laid end-to-end measures 96,900 miles. This would extend around the earth almost four times.

According to the Census ACS 1-year survey, the median household income for Alabama was $48,123 in 2017.

Another way to look at a billion-dollars is if PCI gave one luck Alabamian one penny out of every dollar they have offered the state for a gambling monopoly that person would have 10 million dollars in pennies.

According two Forbes, there are no billionaires in Alabama, but the Poarch Creeks have a billion to give away at a price.

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Bill Britt is editor-in-chief at the Alabama Political Reporter and host of The Voice of Alabama Politics. You can email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter.

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