Doing the maths and logistics...

Children's Dollars For The White House.
(Doing the mathematics and logistics).

If nothing else can be said about President Bush, it is that his
ambitions are to be greatly admired, as have come to light over the
past few weeks.

While the overall Game-plan to "Rid the world of all evil" is perhaps
the most ambitious plan that any person has had (besides the likes of
all the great prophets throughout history) the ambition for every
American child to send a dollar to The White House for the Afghani
children, must come a close second!

Now don't misunderstand me. Putting aside the cynics' claims that this
is no more than another PR exercise, who can argue this is not a noble
ambition!? But what overwhelms me is the logistics of such an
operation, should each and every 58.6 million children (based on 2000
census figures up to the age of 14) rise to the challenge!

For the United States Postal Service (USPS), handling this quantity of
mail will be no big deal, as they deliver some 200 billion pieces of
mail a year. But it's the logistics of handling it when it arrives at
The White House that got me thinking. I am sure I could find out how
much mail The White House receives on a daily basis, were I to dig
around, but that is not too relevant to my overall thoughts about this
ambitious project. And one helluva project it would most certainly
constitute, when one starts to do some 'number-crunching'.

I can't even begin to envisage how much space 58.6 million envelopes
would take up, but I figured the 'processing' of each one, as in
opening, and passing on to the American Red Cross (who are going to
handle the program), would probably take a minute per envelope, in a
stream-lined and 'conveyor-belt-like' operation.

58,600,000 minutes equates to 976,666 hours! Or, if put in terms of a
40 hour working week, would be 24,416 weeks. A one-person post is
definitely out of the question when that boils down to 469 years!

So assuming the plan is to have this all wrapped up in, say, 6 months,
a dedicated team of 938 'Dollar Processing Personnel' are going to be
needed. And whilst I've never been to The White House, I know they get
some 6,000 visitors per day. I also assume an increase of 938 temporary
staff could be accommodated, what with 132 room and 35 bathrooms, but
maybe they could just stand in a long line from the White House mail
room to the Red Cross vans coming to collect the dollars? Alternatively
they could have the line going to the nearest bank with a permanently
dedicated bank teller (tellers?).

The mind truly boggles at just how many ways this could be
handled!

I'm also assuming that the cash, sent in, will be in the form of dollar
bills as opposed to coins, otherwise that would cause a major problem
for the operation. Have you ever tried filling those little paper rolls
that hold stacks of 50 one cent coins? There's an art to that, which I
have yet to master, resulting in many times of my crawling over the
floor, trying to gather up scattered coins which fell through the other
end of the paper tube, because I didn't do the origami trick
properly.

And, once the Red Cross have finally gathered and totalled up the $58.6
million, then the logistics take on a whole new dimension. One good
thing is that, to the best of my knowledge, there are no plans to
arrange for the money itself to be taken to the country in the form of
cash, resulting in $5.86 for each of the 10 million Afghan children.
Considering the exchange rate is $1.00 = 43,000 AFA (Afghani currency),
and that the Currency Import is restricted to 500 AFA per person (which
is 1 cent) it would require almost the entire world population (6
Billion) to deliver it! But those logistics are another story, best
left to think about once my befuddled head has cleared from the "Send a
dollar to The White House" operation. Personally I'd just stick to
ridding the world of all evil, for this month's
project&;#8230;

David Taub is a member of
The British organisation 'National Union of Journalists' (NUJ);
Columnist for the UK magazine 'Poetry Now';
Freelance writer for various UK and USA magazines;
Co-author of Language of Souls (listed on amazon.com)
Website: www.ukpoet.cjb.net