Don't believe everything you see on the Internet -- no matter how much you want it to be true.
All over the U.S., people are buying tickets for Wednesday's record-breaking Powerball $1.4 billion jackpot. In today's political climate, a lot of people have to be thinking: With so many people struggling below the poverty line, how many people can that huge amount of money help?
On Monday, a meme on Facebook started going around that attempted to do the math.
At the time, the jackpot was at $1.3 billion. The creator of the meme took that sum, divided it by the estimated U.S. population (based on the 2014 census, 300 million), and ended up with the answer of $4.33 million.
Poverty solved. We can all go home on our yachts covered in gold coins, sipping on the finest champagne with Kanye West begging us to please join him and Kim at their winter retreat for Christmas. Marvelous.
Except, one problem: that math is actually completely wrong and the actual answer is about $4. We can all go to Starbucks and get a nice mocha latte. Maybe just a tall. No whip. Nothing fancy.
Despite the meme being obviously wrong, the picture was shared more than 900,000 times after musician Livesosa posted it on their Facebook page. While some caught on quickly (and found it funny), others were easily duped (and angry) about the meme's trickery.
