...almost the entire US health industry: Insurers would be about $100b, hospitals $50b and big pharma about $600b. These businesses make money, too!

A friend on a local list sent this in last night...

"Some cost comparisons:

Triborough (RFK) Bridge in 2008 dollars cost to build: $858 million.

The cost to build the Cross-Bronx Expressway in 2008 dollars: $1.08 billion. Until Boston's Big Dig, the Cross-Bronx Expressway the most expensive highway project ever per mile.

The Empire State Plaza $2.1 billion dollars (including interest).

The Big Dig in Boston: $14.6 billion dollars.

The total cost all projects built by Robert Moses in his 34-years in charge of Triboughbourgh Bridge Authority, NYC Parks Commissioner, City Planner, and NY Power Authority, as cited in the NYT Obituary of him: $60.1 billion in 2008 dollars.

The ENTIRE Interstate Highway program, including construction and repairs, has ONLY cost $500 billion over the past 51 years of it's existence."

Which got me wondering the same thing as you? Just How much is $700 billion? What could a $700 billion investment get us?

So how much does universal healthcare cost? What would $700 billion do for education? How many free college tuitions would that be? How much public education would it fund? i.e. what sort of impact would it have on local property tax payers? etc.

And as this is a tech blog and speaking of highways... just how much of an information superhighway could we build for $700 billion? Think we could close the gap with the rest of the world for $700 billion?

Think we could publicly finance campaigns for $700 billion so that the influence of filthy rich investers didn't have more say that us average A's and Z's? So that they didn't get to change the rules and break the financial, regulatory, environmental, legal, and governmental systems and leave us to pay for their mess in the first place?

What else can a $700 billion investment buy the American people?

Peace,

A

Thanks A and Micah--

I've been using both of these.

Did you see that CJR picked this up and then CNN picked it up (http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/09/23/phillips.what.is.700.bill...), and then the daily show made fun of CNN...

Dubious source of pride, but I'll take it.

Z

While technically correct (2000 pies for each person in the US would indeed cost less than $700000000000), your figure for apple pies is horribly misleading. Buying that many pies would still leave you with $394,755,163,000 left over.

Current estimated US population (US Census Bureau) = 305,244,837 people
$700000000000 / 305244837 people = 2,293.241081093 Dollars/person

McDonald's Apple Pies are two for a dollar. So $700000000000 will buy each Person in America 4,586 apple pies.

My guess is that you mistakenly believed that the pies are $1 each, and then rounded 2293 (or a similar value obtained using a different population estimate) down to 2000. If that is the case then you still made two bad choices in addition to your mistake. The first was choosing a product with a value of $1. If you really think that people relate to values expressed in terms of items from a dollar or value menu, then you have been watching too many fast food commercials. The second was rounding to the nearest thousand. In doing so you undervalued the $700000000000 by roughly $89,510,343,008. Even for the US government, 89.5 billion dollars is a lot of money.

If you change 700 Billion into us quarters and put them back to back you will have to circumnavigate the earth roughly 122 times. Or if you stack them they will reach roughly 3 Million miles into space.

I found the spoof by Jon Stewart so funny! My colleagues had been discussing how to get our students to visualize 700 billion. I remembered the Daily Show piece making fun of CNN's reference to the 2,000 apple pies and Googled it. Then I found out it came from you! Pretty cool!

you are absolutely right. thanks!