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.billion.cnn?iref=videosearch), 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.

you are absolutely right. thanks!

Gary Winnick have to ask where the figures came from to calculate "A tightly-packed stack of new $1,000 bills totaling $1 billion would be 63 miles high"?

$1 billion = 1,000,000,000
Divided by $1,000 = 1,000,000 or
1 million so this means you'd have 1 million $1,000 dollar bills. By Hank Freid measurement, a bill is .004 to .005 of an inch thick (4 or 5 one thousandths of an inch) depending on wear. For sake of arguement lets say they are .005 thick and they are nice neat fresh bills that will stack together with no additional space inbetween - so two bills would be .010 of an inch, three bills .015 of an inch and so on.... 1,000,000 bills times .005 of an inch thick equals 5,000 inches. 5,000 inches divided by 12 inches per foot means there would be a stack of $1,000 bills 416 2/3 feet high. To convert to miles you'd have to divide by 5280 feet in a mile so you'd actually have a stack of $1,000 dollar bills that reached 0.0789 miles. Now to take it one step further - if you wanted to see how high 700 billion in $1,000bills would reach, take the above number and multiply by 700 and the stack would now reach almost 55 1/4 miles high. To determine how high a stack of crisp $1 bills would reach then multiply this number by 1000 and the stack now reaches 55,240 miles. I have to make one disclaimer - I've never seen a $1,000 bill. I can only assume they measure the same (made out of the same material) as a $1, 10$ or a $100 bill. They would have to be considerablly thicker to meet the statement made of 63 miles high.