How Much Is A Trillion Dollars?

The Houston Chronicle helps us get our minds around just how much money the bailout and stimulus sums are talking about:

We could spend one million dollars every day since the day Jesus was born and we would still not have one trillion dollars. Do the math. Jesus was born about 2012 years ago. 2012 x 365.2 = 734,782.4. So if we spent one million dollars every day since the day Jesus was born, we’d have spent $734,782,400,000 or almost 735 billon dollars.

That’s less than the stimulus bill but still far short of a trillion bucks. Amanda Shaw over at
First Things draws on some more calculations from the Family Research Council:

With $1.1 trillion, the grand total so far of Obama’s stimulus plan, we could pave the entire US interstate highway system with 23.5-karat gold, we could build 16.6 million Habitat for Humanity houses, we could hire 1.9 million teachers.

To put this further in perspective:

* The Marshall Plan cost $12.7 billion ($115.3 billion, adjusted for inflation)
* The space race cost $36.4 billion ($237 billion with inflation)
* The Korean War cost $54 billion ($454 billion with inflation)
* The New Deal cost $32 billion (estimated; $500 billion with inflation)
* The invasion of Iraq cost $551 billion ($597 billion with inflation)
* The Vietnam War cost $111 billion ($698 billion with inflation)

So, the total cost of the Marshall Plan, the Korean War, and the New Deal—using all figures adjusted for inflation—is less than that of the current economic stimulus package. That’s how much $1.1 trillion is.