The unfathomable debt.

[hercules71185]

People can't really imagine how much a million is. No less 2 million. Because even though that seems like it's only a little more when used comparatively. That is twice as much. Now not being able to understand a million, or a billion, no less a trillion. I'm going to try to put it in a way that even though is understandable at the vast difference. Your mind still can't grasp the numbers.

100,000 dollars. That is only 2.2 lbs. If you were to pick up a small book you can easily do it with one hand. You could hold it all day if you wanted to. That is how much 100k is.

1 Million. This is much larger. This goes from what a typical person makes in 3 years, and makes it into 30. Still we can see that it's relatively light. We can easily pick up the mere 22lbs with a single hand.
So it's amazing that 2.2 to 22 can be such a significant difference. 3 year median salary to 30.

2 Million. Now instead of jumping ahead of ourselves and going to the next big mark we will sit here for a bit and ponder how these 2 numbers can be so vast. Now it's up to 44lbs. Still seems feasible. Now think of it again an average person makes 33k a year. 100k every 3 years and this puts us now at more than a typical person makes in 60 YEARS!! The average person works from 18-65. To make this type of money you'd have to average 33k a year and start work when you were 5 to retire at 65. Still 44lbs just doesn't seem like our entire lives work and more. Even someone as myself who breaks 100k a year, this number is still me working hard every day for 20 years!! That is a long time. I'm barely 20 years old! I'm 23 if I made my salary since I was 3! I'd finally reach 2 million. We are finally grasping how much money really is.

1 Billion. This is where it gets fun. Million to billion. Seems huge, but just how gihugant is it? Remember at 2 Million we are still under the average persons ability to pick it up with one hand. Now can we pick it up? Let's add it up. 22lbs times 1000. 22,000 lbs. WOW wait a second. That number seems so much larger? We could take a million dollars and throw it. Maybe not far, but fact is we could. Now 22,000 lbs?! If we were to get a truck even a dually. We couldn't begin to move it? How much does this equal for a persons salary? Now the number gets so mind numbingly large that once again it becomes just a number. 30,000 years. Lets try to make it a little easier. Say your family pooled all of it's money together. And be conservative saying that you had 15 people pooling consistently since 0AD. Since the "Birth of Christ" whether you believe the instance or not it's still 2000 years. So we would have to load up 11, yes 11 one ton pick up trucks. To carry the Billion. Opposed to a million with 1 hand.

Let's jump to the politicians daily figure.
1 trillion. They don't even know how large this is. HELL after a certain point our brains just see numbers. Now remember how large a billion seems. Well theoretically a semi can carry a little under 4 billion dollars. Or 80,000lbs. We will use these analogies to make sense of these numbers. Since we are again over 1 million. Just remember how large a million is. 22,000,000 or 22 million pounds!. We are up to, 11,000 dually trucks, or 275 semis! Once again let's put it into our salary. Humans were around 25,000 years ago not including Neanderthals. If they started off making 33k a year each and had a family pool of 15 people again. How long would it take to earn that money? Lets see we are in the year 2008 pretty close to 09. Still a million seems like a lot of money besides it takes 30 years for someone to typically make that much, now how long is a million years? A long time huh. So if there was 15 pooling since 23000 BC, it would be the year 1,975,000 before we saw it. 2 million years. Hell 100 years ago few people had electric in homes. Just found out how to produce a car. No tvs no internet lol.

I'll make the point of this quick.
10.6 trillion. Remember 10.6-10.7 is a huge number it's not a simple decimal point. You will sometimes here people say 10.5 or maybe it's 10.7. They are using a 20 BILLION DOLLAR ESTIMATION!!! Man I got screwed on my taxes for being off on my gas deduction 10 bucks.
10.6 trillion
110,000 duallys, 2,750 semi trucks. Whats easier to fathom? The entire USAs population including retirees and children working for 33k a year? Adding it up and realizing it's barley 10 trillion. Or to think of a tight knit family working since 23000BC and will continue to work until 19,750,000 AD to pool that much? Even at this break down we can't imagine what the absurd amount of money we are down in the hole.

In conclusion, no matter who you are or how hard you try you can't understand how large this is.

[Alathald]

What's fun is to estimate how many of something there is in a given area...start small and work your way up. Start with something like cans of Coke in a supermarket (probably a couple hundred) then cans of all types of pops (probably a couple thousand) and work your way up. Then start comparing to other numbers you've collected (like number of spaces in a parking lot). It really helps you get a feel for numbers in general but those large numbers are always hard to grasp (then, if you really want to drive yourself crazy, infinity is an even more intriguing concept).

BTW, an interesting but lesser known fact, there was no year zero AD or BC. It went straight from 1 BC (Before Christ) to 1 AD (Anno Domini; Latin for "In the year of the Lord").

[hercules71185]

I thought there was a 33 year gap?

[Alathald]

Nope, 1 AD is basically the year Jesus was supposed to have been born, not the year of his death. [link]

Anno Domini (Medieval Latin: In the year of (the/Our) Lord), abbreviated as AD or A.D., is a designation used to number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The calendar era that it numbers is based on the traditionally reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus.

Before Christ is used in the English language to denote years before the start of this epoch. Because B.C. is the English abbreviation for Before Christ, some people incorrectly conclude that A.D. must mean After Death, i.e., after the death of Jesus. If that were true, the thirty-three or so years of his life would not be in any era.

Just a fun factoid

[hercules71185]

awesome, I always like fun facts. We should have a fact of the day thread. lol.

[DMB2000uk]

I'm sure whoever worked it out actually got it wrong though and Jesus was actually born 4 or so years before it switched to AD.

Nice way of trying to break down the numbers, Are the weights you use the actual weights that amount of money would be?
(It's not very clear if it is)

Dan

[martini161]

I'm sure whoever worked it out actually got it wrong though and Jesus was actually born 4 or so years before it switched to AD.

Nice way of trying to break down the numbers, Are the weights you use the actual weights that amount of money would be?
(It's not very clear if it is)

Dan

something random about this, the liberal secular jackass administration in my school district have told social studies teachers to stop using BC and AD, and to use BCE(before current era) and CE (current Era) which is the stupidest thing ive ever heard. even if they do wanna remove christ from it its still saying that current era started with the birth of christ, so wth?

[vicaphit]

Or maybe the first calender said "there are this many days left in the world" and then when that number reached zero they were bright enough to start counting up instead of having negative years.

[hercules71185]

the weights are pretty close to real. A million dollars in 100 dollar bills is aprox 22lbs.