To put it in perspective

Beyond all the political rhetoric and flamboyant display of private parts by our politicians through social media, there are real burning issues we are currently facing as a Nation and as a World. As much as it is hard to understand the macro-economics at the global scale and its impact to the day-to-day life, it is equally hard to comprehend the numbers that get thrown around in any of these political discussions. I wanted to understand the fundamentals before trying to grasp the big picture. Here is some information I have grouped together and if you are like me, it might help a little bit.

Everyone understands a million, right? If not, a million is one followed by 6 zeros (It is 10 lakhs, in Indian terms). What about a billion? A billion is 1 followed by 9 zeros. If you thought billion was a lot, think of a Trillion. It is 1 followed by 12 zeros.

These days, If you notice, this is the term our politicians (both left and right sides of the political spectrum use, quite loosely). After I started trying to understand how big a trillion really is, I doubt if any of these dudes who throw this term around really understand what it means. Your intellect can only grasp so much and it shuts off after that.

Let me take a different approach in trying to explain this (NPR covered this story last year and it was quite interesting)

If you stack up enough $100 bills to make $100,000 – the stack would be 4 inches tall.

If you stack up enough $100 bills to make One Million Dollars – $1,000,000 – the stack would be 40" tall (just over 3 feet).

If you stack up enough $100 bills to make One Trillion Dollars – $1,000,000,000,000 – the stack would be 679 miles high.

By road, this is the distance from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City (or) New York City to Cincinnati (if you are on the East Coast). I'm unable to connect with this after it passed the mile mark. Also, if you got this far into my post, I see the bulb lighten up in your head. 

These are the numbers our politicians use on a daily basis. So, do you think they really understand it? Feel free to share your thoughts.


Stay tuned - Schools of Philosophy in Hinduism. (This is just an internal mechanism so I could stay on top of my posts, I have been slacking quite a bit)