It’s All About the Benjamins

The title of this post refers to a hip-hop “song” from some years ago, which in turn refers to the hundred-dollar bill. In certain circles the C-note is known as a “Benjamin” because it features a portrait of Benjamin Franklin on its front.

However, tonight’s topic is a European one, so we need a more suitable title drawn from an appropriate ethnic context. The design on the front of the hundred-euro note features a “window in the Baroque and Rococo style”. Hmm. Not much we can do with that. “It’s all about the Windows”? Or maybe: “It’s all about the Barokies”?

Not very euphonic…

Perhaps we could use Pounds Sterling instead. The portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II appears on British banknotes. “It’s all about the Besses”, maybe…? But that will stale-date before too much longer, and then we’d have to switch to (God help us) “It’s all about the Chuckies”. Or, if his subjects are lucky, he might abdicate in favor of his eldest, and we’ll say “It’s all about the Willies”.

Anyway…

The inspiration for all this whimsy came from a Fox News article that Fjordman found for tonight’s news feed. It seems that Pope Francis has announced that the Vatican will do its share to solve the “migration crisis” by taking in two (count them! 2!) refugee families:

Vatican will shelter 2 families fleeing war, hunger, as Pope calls on Europe to do the same

The Vatican will shelter two families of refugees who are “fleeing death” from war or hunger, Pope Francis announced Sunday as he called on Catholic parishes, convents and monasteries across Europe to do the same.

Francis cited Mother Teresa, the European-born nun who cared for the poorest in India, in making his appeal in remarks to pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter’s Square.

Well, isn’t that nice! A real gesture of solidarity with the poor huddled masses of wretched refuse from Basra to Casablanca.

The Pope wants Europe to step up and “do the same”. But what would be the appropriate share of “the same” for other European countries? I don’t have the time to do the calculations for the whole of the European Union, so I’ll just stick to a compare-and-contrast between the Vatican and the United Kingdom.

The Vatican has a population of about 1,000 people. If they take in two immigrant families, that’s one family per 500 Vatican inhabitants.

To get a feeling of how proportionate this is, look at the UK. Britain has a population of about 64 million (64,000,000). If the UK were to take in one family per 500 natives, as the Vatican proposes, that would come to 64,000,000 / 500 = 128,000 families. That’s a fair number of people, all right.

But wait! We all know that Pope Francis is like Smaug sitting atop a huge pile of gold…

The Vatican has a net worth of an estimated $12 billion ($12,000,000,000). A comparable figure for the UK would be its GDP, which is estimated at $2.7 trillion ($2,700,000,000,000).

So when the Vatican takes in two families, that means one family for $12,000,000,000 / 2 = $6,000,000,000, that is, one family for every $6 billion of its collective wealth.

If the UK were to absorb one family for every $6 billion of GDP, it would take in only $2,700,000,000,000 / $6,000,000,000 or just 450 families.

To put it another way: if the UK took in all those 128,000 families as calculated based on its relative population, and had $6 billion in national wealth for each of those families, the UK would have to have a GDP of 128,000 × $6,000,000,000 = $768,000,000,000,000 — $768 trillion!

That means the Vatican is proposing to absorb only 2.7 / 768, or about 0.35% of its share. Proportionately speaking, it should take in at least 569 immigrant families.

Come on, Pope Francis! Put your migrants where your money is!

16 thoughts on “It’s All About the Benjamins

  1. And no telling if they’re Christian.

    Never mind. I don’t need to know. I already got the answer.

    • I agree. I don’t think the Pope is Christian either, but a Roman Pagan Cultist with a veneer of Socialac.

  2. The Pope should be protecting Europe. This move on his part is ridiculous and dangerous because it sends the wrong message. Charity begins at home. It is his duty to protect the faithful against the islamic hordes.

  3. My goodness Baron, you’re quite the ham. But I do enjoy you mathematical analysis. Should we print some snazzy MUslim Lives Matter shirts (Italian and Spanish) for El Pope’s trip?

  4. As a Bishop-Cardinal I must say I am deeply opposed to this Pontiff. The man ia a Commie in white linen.

    • No surprise there, Bishop, but this secularist (of nonconformist heritage) suspects that the Pope wouldn’t recognise you as a member of his flock anyway.

  5. This may be slightly off-topic. But this pope is the dumbest I have seen in all of my life! But no doubt he will enjoy the two families he “takes in” — will he try to convert them? Will they try to convert him?

    Never mind, I’m just trying to have a little fun here.

  6. It’s staring you in the face, man!
    “It’s all about the Benefits”.
    Obvious, but I suspect you already knew that.

    Frankie-boy had better get the decorators in, whitewash over all those filthy paintings. Idols in the dumpster, too.

  7. I wonder when the pope will participate in his first interfaith Muslim prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica? I bet it’s coming.

    • Or worse. An armed occupation of Saint Peter’s Basilica. We are begging for defeat and castration at every level. Muslims of course are only too happy to oblige. We are amazing. Poor old infidels.

  8. Will the sheep for the Eid sacrifice be slaughtered in front of St. Peters Basilica, or behind it?

  9. After Benedict’s abdication I was hoping for an African Pope because they’re the most conservative of the prelates and have first-hand experience with the dreadful threat of Islam. This would have also served as a powerful, encouraging statement to Third World Christians, esp. considering it is there that the Faith is the strongest, most traditional. Francis is a transplanted Italian, a safe choice for the first Third World pontiff, and from what is now the most “progressive” of the orders, the Jesuits, a far cry from the days of the Reformation. Beware that Francis is not as “liberal” as the secular press makes him out to be (they have an agenda to misrepresent), though he’s certainly not as conservative as his two immediate predecessors were.

  10. Dear Jorge,
    As a fellow Catholic, It might be nice to take in a refugee family. But you see, I have been un- or under-employed for the past two or more years, due to socialist economic policies that you yourself also espouse. So I wouldn’t be able to provide my new Islamic guests with all of the items that they require, most especially, the prayer rugs.
    But, after reading LaudatoSi, I actually heeded your ghost writer, and got rid of my window air conditioner, because that might help my soul achieve the Beatific Vision with greater speed. Who needs Confession?
    Yours in Christ,
    A True Catholic

  11. The current Pope acts is he were not a Christian, but the leader of some silly NGO intent on ‘doing good’ and to hell with the consequences. This is unsurprising considering he hails from Latin America where the stupid and poisonous heresy known as ‘liberation theology’ was born and flourished. This ‘theology’ is essentially Marxism decorated with Gospel quotations.

    Therefore Pope Francis is not interested in fasting and prayer, in furthering Christian spirituality, in defending the teachings of Christ or in saving his flock from jihadi persecutors in countries like Iraq, Pakistan or Syria. All he cares about is social justice (as he understands it). He does not act as a man in charge of the largest and most influential Christian denomination in the world, but rather as a strident and shallow political activist.

    To me, this much-hyped Pope seems to be the grave-digger of Roman Catholicism.

    • Anton: you make good observations. He is the grave digger. Based on what I have seen, and what I read, I believe that The Church might schism, if folks continue to let Satan be successful. But the best news of all, is that in the end, the very Very End, the gates of hell will not prevail against Christ’s Church.
      But it’s gonna be a loooooong road in the meantime….

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