HOW MUCH IS 6 TRILLION DOLLARS? COURTESY OF "CHAINSAW" ON MARKETWATCH COMMENT THREAD

How much is 6 trillion dollars? I worked this up in a slightly different presentation about 15 years ago as a letter to an editor for an Idaho newspaper when Washington began talking routinely in terms of trillions of dollars. The approximations and math are mine, so corrections are welcome. Once before I posted this on Marketwatch, but I think the reminder is due again. A typical tractor-trailer rig that you see on the highway weighs in at about 80,000 pounds, including the rig weight, so the load weight would be less. There has been some talk of setting load weights at a maximum 50,000 pounds, so that will be the figure I will use for the following. But again, how much is 6 trillion dollars? A. 62,500 tons of $100.00 bills. B. A convoy of 2,500 eighteen wheelers each loaded with 50,000 pounds of $100.00 bills. C. A stack of one dollar bills reaching all the way to the moon and 1/3 of the way back to the earth. Answer: Any of the above. I assumed that a stack of one dollar bills = 300 per inch. Then, 300 bills/inch = 3,600 bills/ft, or about $19 million/mile (for $1.00 bills stacked). $6 trillion divided by $19 million = 315,789 miles. With the distance from the earth to the moon being 238,857 miles (old data from a 1966 dictionary), 1.32 times this would be 315,291 miles (close enough for government work, pardon the pun). Also assume that 30 ($100) bills = 1 ounce. (I used a postage scale with several small bills to approximate the weight.) So, using now $100 bills, each ounce would = $3,000. One pound would = $48,000 of $100 bills. One ton would = $96 million. Then, $6 trillion divided by $96 million = 62,500 tons. And 2,500 loads at 50,000 pounds each = 125,000,000 lbs = 62,500 tons. By the way, a convoy of 2,500 eighteen wheelers, if you allow even just 200 feet per vehicle including following distance, equals 500,000 feet, or a steady convoy 95 miles long.