What Could You do With $827 Billion

$1,000,000.00

The picture to the right was an exhibit at a children’s museum I visited, the box contains $1,000,000 in $1 bills. As the United States Senate ponders President Obama’s stimulus package, I am wondering what else they could do with $827 billion. It sure is a lot of money, but what does it look like in terms we can all understand:

4,510,909,090,909.09 eggs
260,062,893,081.76 Gallons of milk
7,169,633,351.71 bottles of beer
1,687,755,102.04 lbs of $1 bills
32,954,545.45 miles of $1 bills laid out end to end (the shortest distance from earth to Venus is around 25 million miles).
$5,992.75 for every tax payer in America (based on 2007 IRS Estimate of 138 million taxpayers)
$2,756.67 for every person in America, assuming 300 million people.
177 Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers ($4.5 billion each, the U.S. only has 10)

Now tell me that this “Plan” is going to do more for our economy than cutting an almost $6000.00 check to every taxpayer in America, or better yet why don’t they just buy the beer and we can all get drunk and forget about the woes of our 401k. What would you do with $6000.00, leave a comment and let us know.

Tagged as: Economic Recovery Act, economy, obama, Stimulus, Stimulus Package

{ 5 comments }

1 The Weakonomist February 9, 2009 at 2:29 pm: Here’s what I would do with my cups of the stimulus:
Buy a big HDTV and pay for my honeymoon to Jamaica.

That is exactly why Americans aren’t being cut a check. We’ll buy a tv that send money to china/japan’s economy or blow it in some other fashion that increases the country’s trade deficit. Just so we’re clear I’m against any bailout, but bc Americans can’t be trusted to use the bailout properly to actually stimulate the economy the govt is doing it this way.
2 The Weakonomist February 9, 2009 at 2:33 pm: My apologies for typos, I’m on an iPhone.
3 Kyle February 9, 2009 at 2:52 pm: @The Weakonomist
I like the perspective, I haven’t thought of it that way, once you have your TV though you are going to need a new stand for your TV, HDMI cables, oh and upgrade your cable so you get HDTV, a fancy universal remote, and buy new clothes for your trip to Jamaica. 🙂
4 Sam May 13, 2011 at 12:32 pm: I’d give the 6k back immediately, because next year when we do taxes we would have to claim it in fed or state and end up paying back some or all of it, so why bother.

I could day dream of getting a reliable car, but Cash for Clunkers removed so many from our area (and bailed the car industry out a second time) , that’s useless as well.

So I’d end up paying the blasted bills the poor economy has racked up just to make ends meet.

6k doesn’t go very far these days.
5 Joyce October 11, 2011 at 9:01 pm: what does $68,000,000.00 look like