Thursday, February 5, 2009

Just Trying to Wrap My Head Around This

* The Marshall Plan cost $12.7 billion ($115.3 billion, adjusted for inflation)
* The space race cost $36.4 billion ($237 billion with inflation)
* The Korean War cost $54 billion ($454 billion with inflation)
* The New Deal cost $32 billion (estimated; $500 billion with inflation)
* The invasion of Iraq cost $551 billion ($597 billion with inflation)
* The Vietnam War cost $111 billion ($698 billion with inflation)

So, the total cost of the Marshall Plan, the Korean War, and the New Deal—using all figures adjusted for inflation—is less than that of the current economic stimulus package. That’s how much $1.1 trillion is. (HT:Amanda)

OR:

If you collected a $1 million per day, every day from the birth of Christ, in 2009 you'd only be about 3/4 of the way to a trillion.

If you got $1 every second, it would take almost 32,000 years to get to a trillion.

If you stacked a trillion dollar bills on top of each other, it would go 68,000 miles into space--1/3 of the way to the moon.

If you took 100-dollar bills and put them side to side, it would circle the equator 38.9 times

OR:

1.1 trillion dollars (1,100,000,000,000 dollars) could build 16.6 million Habitat For Humanity houses.

4 comments:

ruchi said...

Does the figure for Iraq count the total cost between 2003 and now? That seems low.

Sara said...

wow.

Joyce said...

Ruchi-I don't know, but you could check Amanda's post. The other figures are from a CNN program.

Farmer's Daughter said...

Thanks for putting it in perspective.

My brother was telling me about the CNN article today.