A brief thought. What if every person in the world gave one dollar to help the homeless? Right now there are 6,917,957,635 people in the world, and roughly three more people are born every second. In the time it takes you to read these first two sentences, it’s been about five seconds, right? Now there are 6,917,957,650 people in the world. Right now (if you ignore any other seconds since you read the previous sentence) if every person gave the equivalent of one US dollar we would have $ 6,917,957,650 to give to the homeless. That is a lot of money. There are 100,000,000 homeless people on earth, and with $ 6,917,957,650, we could give each of them $ 69.18. If every person in the world gave the equivalent of two U.S. dollars, there would be $13,835,915,300 to use for the homeless and we would be able to give each homeless individual $ 138. 36. How many US citizens could buy a house for $138.36? The answer is: no one. However, would that money be helpful to them in some way? Yes. It is hard to think globally about homelessness, because not everyone sees it in their own country or state or city as it is. Because of the current economy, most of us believe we have our own money to worry about. But while we worry about our money, the number of homeless people in the world has gotten so great that even is if every person in the entire world gave one dollar, we would not even be close to ending homelessness.

Currently, there are 306,000,000 people in the United States. Of those people, roughly 134,372,678 are required fill out tax returns based on their annual income. The last count of the number of homeless people in the US, in 2005, was 744,000. Every year, each American family meeting federal income reporting requirements receives an IRS Income Tax form. On the front page of these forms there is a small box that you can check if you want to give three dollars of your tax refunds to political campaigns. If checking that box meant giving that money to end homelessness, and every tax payer in the United States checked that box on their Income Tax form, $541.86 would go to each homeless individual in America. If every single US citizen checked that box, regardless of their age, $ 12, 096 would be given to each homeless individual. With $12, 096, some families could pay rent for months. That amount of money might not seem significant to some, but it is more than many families on the verge of homelessness make in a year. If that check was written to every homeless person in America- we would make a difference. Furthermore, if each major World power came up with a similar plan, we could make a difference globally.

So, on this rainy day I have a penny (or dollar) for your thoughts:

What if we stopped thinking charity, and started thinking in population?