|
|
« Previous McArdle | Next McArdle » |
|
What does one trillion dollars mean to you?
ByA trillion is, in some sense, a meaningless number. Perhaps this is a problem with inflation in both our currency and the size of our government--the spending figures are now beyond any normal person's imagining. In the comments to another thread, two readers try to put some emotional weight to these hefty numbers.
A couple years ago someone asked me, as an aid to visualizing the budget, how many transport flights it would take to move $1T worth of $100 bills.
So $1T is 10B $100 bills.
10B grams is 10M kg
120,000 kg is the capacity of the C5 Galaxy aircraft. So it would take 84 flights to move $1T in $100 bills.
The Galaxy C5 is (she said with stunning understatement), not a small aircraft:

Imagine you're given $1T on the day Jesus Christ was allegedly crucified.
You spend $1M per day, every day, 365 days a year without stopping for any reason.
As of today, you would still need around 700 years to be completely out of money.
Don't worry, though--I assume when you do run out, there will be a government program to top up your funds.













.jpg)















Join the Discussion
After you comment, click Post. If you’re not already logged in you will be asked to log in or register. blog comments powered by Disqus