I, like many other people in America, am in a kind of daze about all this money being redirected towards 'bailing out' America.
To me, $1,000 is a lot of money. However, when they start talking about hundreds of billions, we leave the territory of the tangible and enter the realm of the ridiculous. What is a billion dollars to the likes of me? Monopoly money (unfortunately, that's closer to the truth than I'd like.)
CK linked to a graphic illustration of how much a trillion dollars ACTUALLY is. It's very thought provoking. It makes me slightly more alarmed about the fact that America's soon going to be $11 trillion dollars in debt. That's just...
It's just silly money. No wonder nobody can take it seriously. The whole country's shell-shocked and when people are thinking in billions, what's one or two more either way? It's not our money (although it actually is.)
We start off with a single $100 bill - a 'Benjamin' as they're commonly known.
One hundred, hundred-dollar bills makes a stack about half an inch thick and is worth about $10,000. That's serious walkin' around money as far as I'm concerned.
One hundred stacks of $10,000 would equal a million dollars - which would (as you'll know from Hollywood) fit neatly into a briefcase. Consider; that small pile of cash is enough to buy a luxury house, or live off comfortably for a decade.
$100 million dollars is a serious chunk o' change. You'd need a fork-lift to cart this about.
...and a billion dollars looks like something like this. Remember, Obama's bailout bill was in excess of 700 billion dollars. That's nearly a trillion dollars.
...which looks something like this, if you're wondering.
That's how much (at a minimum) we're currently spending to bail America out of it's self-inflicted bankruptcy. That's a thousand, thousand million dollars.
If we had to pay America's bills in cash, perhaps it would make us all think a little more about what we're doing (or, at least, give union fork-lift drivers a serious boost!)
