Every Man a King: Numbers

    Every Man a King: Numbers

      Statistics don't lie.

      Unless, of course, you're making them up.

      Well, they actually can lie even if you don't make them up, but Long was a master at throwing down the numbers to make his argument. In "Every Man a King" those numbers are yuuuge because he's aggregating amounts of debt, income, and assets on a national scale. That lets him toss out figures like $272 billion (total personal debt) and $300 billion (what one man could conceivably accumulate if he wanted). These figures probably wowed his audiences; it was an outrage.

      He could also bring those numbers close to home to make it more relatable to the average guy:

      Now, my friends, if you were off on an island where there were 100 lunches, you could not let one man eat up the hundred lunches, or take the hundred lunches and not let anybody eat any of them, If you did, there would not be anything else for the balance of the people to consume. (43-44)

      Long lays out some pretty specific numbers in his Share Our Wealth plan, like the maximum amount of assets any one person could own or the minimum guaranteed to each citizen. True or not, it was an impressive blizzard of statistics. Long never cited his sources for his statistics, but the mentions of those millions and billions got people fired up, and that was the point.