Literary Discussions

Perhaps you are correct. I shall look at the speech again. I saw an estimate that the world's population today is about 6% of all humans who ever lived, so if you work backwards means that a total of 155 billion humans have walked upon the Earth. Now if 20-40 billion were benefited I would see the justification for saying "billions" but I still think it is stretching the point. Today 60% in Pakistan live on less than $2 USD per day and 20% live on less than $1.25.  And from what I know of India, I see that many of the cotton farmers are losing their land and committing suicide. And entire documentary was done on this called "The Dying Fields." I know that people in India who leave the farms to work in the cities will decide that the poverty of the farm is preferable because at least they can get something to eat from the farm, but not in the city.  Perhaps the speech would have read better as "many" or "countless." Why say the "b" word when it is not necessary? I do remember that it took until 1860 for the world populations to reach 1 billion. By 1930 it had doubled to 2 billion. By 1970 it had tripled to 3 billion. I was just looking today at the total number of German soldiers through WWII as 18 million   now compare that with the figure of all the deaths in the Congo from warfare totaling 20 million and that is more than died in WWII both sides.  I will study the link. I am no mathematician or statistician or sociologist or anthropologist but then neither is Obama so I wonder where is figures come from and how well those figures were vetted. I have heard other people make the "billions of people this and that" error because they are so used to monetary figures in the billions and trillions. Numbers can be deceptive. I once calculated how long it would take me if, say 6 billion people were lined up and I were to stand before each one for 5 seconds look them in the eye, smile and say "hello" ... it would take me 951 years. IF I whizzed by on a bicycle and waved to them I could do it in 100.