Just how big is 700 Billion Dollars?

[analog_kidd]

Got an email from a friend with a graphic showing just how big $700 billion is and it blew me away. I found a web page showing the same graphic. You can see it here at number 3 on the list:

http://www.humblelibertarian.com/2008/10/how-big-is-700-billion.html

Here are some more data points I found interesting:

http://agentsofurbanism.com/2008/09/25/how-big-is-700-billion

Let’s start with zeros, all eleven of them. This plan is costing the government (all of us taxpayers) 700,000,000,000 dollars.

REPRESENTATION

I considered using AutoCAD to make a simple dot matrix illustrating 700 billion points. However, even at a screen resolution of 1600×1200, you don’t have enough pixels for this. The largest set of points (a black screen) could be no larger than 1.92 million. At that rate, it would take an additional 364,584 more screens.

POPULATION

In 2007, the estimated population was 301.6 million. Using this figure, the bailout plan will cost $2,320 per person.

Modifying this calculation to reflect the labor force, the US Dept. of Labor estimates there were 151.4 million people, 16 and older, employed in 2006. This translates to $4,624 per employed person.

Now, let’s say for some reason the entire world pitched in to help out. At 6.7 billion, that is still $104 per person.

HOUSING

In 2007, the median price of new homes sold in the US was 247,900. At that rate, the government could buy 2,823,719 new houses. Assuming 4 people per household, that is 11.3 million people.

TIME

700 billion seconds equals…

11.67 billion minutes

194.4 million hours

8.1 million days

1.16 million weeks

22,257 years

The age of Earth is estimated at 4.55 billion years, a number that is 0.65 % of 700 billion.

The age of the universe is estimated at 13.73 billion years, a number that is 1.96 % of 700 billion.

DISTANCE

Given the circumference of the Earth is 24,902 miles, 700 billion miles would take you around the equator 28,110,192 times.

At Mars’ recent closest distance to Earth (34.6 million miles), you could have made 10,115 roundtrips before going 700 billion miles.

[towerclimber37]

apparently it's not big enough..from what I've garnered we've given AIG ANOTHER bailout of about the same amount...

take a look at a graph of the dow jones in the last 60 days. it goes down an down and down...and goes down more often during obama speeches.

[Guest GUTTERbOY]

On a related note...

http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html