Posted on 03/06/2009 10:41:54 AM PST by Blood of Tyrants
All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"...
A billion dollars...
A hundred billion dollars...
Eight hundred billion dollars...
One TRILLION dollars...
What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I'd take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.
We'll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slighty fewer have owned them. Guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.
A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun.
Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.
While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet...
And $1 BILLION dollars... now we're really getting somewhere...
Next we'll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we've been hearing about so much. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it's a million million. It's a thousand billion. It's a one followed by 12 zeros.
You ready for this?
It's pretty surprising.
Go ahead...
Scroll down...
Ladies and gentlemen... I give you $1 trillion dollars...
(And notice those pallets are double stacked.)
So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase "trillion dollars"... that's what they're talking about.
ping
Ask Robert Mugabe. Who could probably get a job with Il Douche’s administration.
One Thousand Billion. I remember thinking about large numbers as a kid, and I asked what comes after a Billion. Well, they told me a Thousand Billion makes One Trillion.
It was as incomprehensible back then, as it is now in my ‘40’s. I’d suggest no one can truly fathom what a Trillion Dollars is, but your example is an “absolutely perfect” way for me to explain it to my daughter this evening, and I thank you.
If I had a Trillion dollars, tax free(remember that is a 1000 billions),I could spend a billion dollars a year for a thousand years before I went broke, again assuming no interest was earned by the trillion.
To further drive it home, I could spend a 1000 millions per year(that's a billion), for 1000 years before going through a trillion bucks.
When ever I hear the a**hats in DC throwing around sums like that I always picture myself trying to spend this huge amount of money, it brings home the sheer amount of wealth our government blows through every year, with very little return on the investment I might add.
Ping!
A trillion dollars in one dollar bills would weigh about 1.1 million tons, or 22 billion pounds. If you were using 100 dollar bills it would way about 11 thousands tons.
Assume you had $1 trillion. And assume you have 40 years of life left. Assume you are awake for 16 hours each day of those 40 years.
You’d have to spend over $70,000 dollars EVERY MINUTE for the rest of your waking life to burn through that cash.
A new house every 3 minutes. A brand new Cadillac Escalade every minute. A new Gulfstream 550 every 8 hours.
Yes, that’s the spending you’d have to do...
Spending 1,000,000 a day you would have needed to start about 2600 years ago 600 BC, the beginning of the Roman Republic, to reach one trillion in spending.......
A Lot of money isn’t! The amount of money being spent is obscene.
Like Mark Twain once said, "Thank God we don't get all the government we pay for."
Graham’s number? Can we not just call it infinity?
I don’t pretend to understand it, although I think Large Number theory is cool. I was reading up on it a little more after posting this and I think I sprained my brain.
If it has more zero’s than you can count or even imagine, it IS infinity, no matter what all the fancy math says.
bump
Ahem:
Why not say screw it and go ahead and spend 20 million a year for fifty years.
It would be fun!
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