Thursday, October 10, 2013

Our National Debt


Here is a picture of $40 million in brand new $100 bills.  A billion dollars would occupy a space 25 times as large.  A trillion dollars would be 25,000 times as large.  Our current national debt,  at $17 trillion dollars, would be approximately 425,000 times as large.  Assuming that this block of money is one square yard (it appears slightly larger to me), our national debt in $100 bills would take up 425,000 cubic yards ... or almost 11.5 million cubic feet.

This volume is then roughly equal to the displacement of about eleven Washington Monuments (if this national tourist mecca is ever reopened by the powers that spent this money to begin with.)

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