Economic Quiz Answer

Yesterday I asked about the significance of this dollar amount:

$3,036,258,899

There were some fantastic guesses. Thanks for playing. Unfortunately, no one came up with the right answer, so no one will take home the cornucopia of prizes I had prepared.

My addition might be wrong, but I looked at this list of Major League Baseball salaries for 2009 and added them up. I just added once and may have missed a million or two, but according to that sloppy research (of which I am quite proud), that amount represents the sum total of the MLB payrolls for this season.

Three BILLION, thirty-six MILLION, two hundred fifty eight THOUSAND, eight hundred ninety nine dollars.

Starting with the Yankees whose payroll is $201,449,289, an average of $7,748,050 per player, and down to the lowly Florida Marlins, who shell out a measly $36,814,000 for their team, on which each player scrapes by on just $1,314,786 on average. (Poor guys, how do they manage?)

Okay - let me just say that I really am a baseball fan and I am not bashing professional sports or anything. So this is definitely not an anti-sports thing.

I just think it kind of puts things in perspective somehow. I'm still working out exactly how. Three billion dollars. I'm just saying ... that's a lot of dollars.