Making sense of figures with many zeroes

This morning, a retired teacher was complaining about one item mentioned in the AG report which cost 2800% more than market price. It may seem like many times more than the actual by using percentage, but when we use an example, then it is actually 28 times more. I believe he was referring to the binoculars which could be bought for less than Rm2000 but billed at Rm56,000! This illustration is not to downplay the seriousness of the offence (which we have never seen any offender found guilty anyway), but to put it in perspective.

What should be considered more serious were the huge sums in terms of billions of ringgit which were siphoned by those responsible in the Defence Ministry. We tend to get distracted by smaller amounts marked up many times, instead of Rm1 billion marked up 7 times. But the prevalence of corrupt practices which happened every year with no action taken or no offenders found guilty, seems to make a mockery of the AG Report and its usefulness.

Our national debt was stated as Rm407 billion. If we assume our population as 28 million, then it is easy to work out mentally in the following manner:
Rm1 per head would add up to Rm28 million;
Rm10 per head would add up to Rm280 million;
Rm100 per head would add up to Rm2800 million or Rm2.8 billion;
Rm1000 per head would add up to Rm 28 billion;
Rm10000 per head would add up to Rm 280 billion;

In other words, at a rough guess, each of us is bearing more than Rm15000 of our national debt.

You can bet that the figure is going to go up every year unless BN gets booted out.

Before that happens, if you are still in the mood to laugh over a recurring bad situation, Patrick makes fun of it here...
http://www.niamah.com/2011/10/thursday-funnies.html
Link