4 ms·

$36,000,000,000 is such an unfathomable amount of money. I know it's mostly done in debt/etc, but jesus, taking a second to think about the quantity itself is m

$36,000,000,000 is such an unfathomable amount of money. I know it's mostly done in debt/etc, but jesus, taking a second to think about the quantity itself is mind bottling. Edit: 36B, not 360B, but still damn -- that's a lot of money.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
smeyer 10y ago
>$360,000,000,000 is such an unfathomable amount of money. The article says $36B, not $360B. I'm not sure if you misread or made a typo.
- drusepth 10y ago
  Was a typo, thanks!
nkozyra 10y ago
Thinking of modern fiat as a finite, palpable concept is your first mistake ;)
CPLX 10y ago
It's cheaper than three new U.S. aircraft carriers.
- gorkemyurt 10y ago
  Can anyone explain how US policy makers justify the US military spending? Is it just about creating jobs? So why not build trains hospitals schools with that money? Is it just because the defense industry lobbies the shit out of US politicians? Surely our new mega rich class have the resources to lobby against this.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    The dynamics of American hegemony in the latter half of the 20th century are too complicated to recap in a forum reply, but the short answer is that projecting economic and military power around the world are intricately linked.
laurentoget 10y ago
It is 3 weeks of US military budget.
xyzzy4 10y ago
Doesn't seem unfathomable to me. $36B is just a square grid of 190 x 190 San Francisco houses.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  Visualizations like this are handy to get your head around big numbers. I remember thinking as a kid that a million was an incredibly huge number - how could you even fit a million dollar bills in a room! But then consider that a marble is (very roughly) one cc, and you could fit a million marbles in a cube one meter per side, and it doesn't seem so great. You could (very roughly) fit that much in a hot tub. A billion? Well, just cover a football field with hot tubs and that gets you around _10_ billion marbles. If marbles cost a buck a pop (they don't, but think of something that does and is the same size) China is building the project for the cost of covering a football pitch with hot tubs full of marbles. Or, consider that copper is around $4800 per tonne (1000 kg, or one Megagram). Copper is about 9 g/ml, and the aforementioned cubes are a million ml each, so that's 9 Megagrams per hot tub. You could cover a football pitch with hot tubs and only fill them about 1/9th full of copper for the money China is using to build this rail system, which suddenly makes it seem like a pretty good deal. Also, I never knew just how vaguely defined football pitches were : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch " The two goal lines must be between 45 and 90 m (50 and 100 yd) and be the same length.[3] The two touch lines must also be of the same length, and be between 90 and 120 m " You could have a field with over twice as much area as another and they'd both be legal. Edit: I made a huge mathematical error thinking about the copper bit of the above. $36B buys 7.5 million tonnes of copper, which is about 750,000 hot tubs' worth. A football pitch holding 10,000 hot tubs (100x100) could be stacked with 75 layers of hot tubs of copper. Really, I just need to think of a metal that costs $1 per ml.
jdietrich 10y ago
You want a really unfathomable amount of money? The Department of Defence's Joint Strike Fighter program is forecast to cost $1.1 trillion over its lifespan. The program is already $117 billion over budget. China is building a world class railway system for a third of the cost of the budget overrun of a single fighter aircraft project. http://gao.gov/assets/600/591608.pdf http://gao.gov/assets/600/591608.pdf
- arkwar 10y ago
  World class - maybe, but they have certainly cut corners on their high speed regional network that has resulted in some horrific accidents (that go unreported in the rest of the world). Also, something of like this in the US would be an order of magnitude most expensive to build. The current NEC 'high-speed' plan is around $151 Billion (in 2012 dollars) which is only about a 450 mile run between Boston and DC. Planned to be completed by 2040 (if ever funded), the travel time would still be just over 3 hours to go the ~450 miles.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

smeyer 10y ago

>$360,000,000,000 is such an unfathomable amount of money. The article says $36B, not $360B. I'm not sure if you misread or made a typo.

drusepth 10y ago
Was a typo, thanks!

nkozyra 10y ago

Thinking of modern fiat as a finite, palpable concept is your first mistake ;)

CPLX 10y ago

It's cheaper than three new U.S. aircraft carriers.

gorkemyurt 10y ago
Can anyone explain how US policy makers justify the US military spending? Is it just about creating jobs? So why not build trains hospitals schools with that money? Is it just because the defense industry lobbies the shit out of US politicians? Surely our new mega rich class have the resources to lobby against this.
- CPLX 10y ago
  The dynamics of American hegemony in the latter half of the 20th century are too complicated to recap in a forum reply, but the short answer is that projecting economic and military power around the world are intricately linked.

laurentoget 10y ago

It is 3 weeks of US military budget.

xyzzy4 10y ago

Doesn't seem unfathomable to me. $36B is just a square grid of 190 x 190 San Francisco houses.

CalRobert 10y ago
Visualizations like this are handy to get your head around big numbers. I remember thinking as a kid that a million was an incredibly huge number - how could you even fit a million dollar bills in a room! But then consider that a marble is (very roughly) one cc, and you could fit a million marbles in a cube one meter per side, and it doesn't seem so great. You could (very roughly) fit that much in a hot tub. A billion? Well, just cover a football field with hot tubs and that gets you around _10_ billion marbles. If marbles cost a buck a pop (they don't, but think of something that does and is the same size) China is building the project for the cost of covering a football pitch with hot tubs full of marbles. Or, consider that copper is around $4800 per tonne (1000 kg, or one Megagram). Copper is about 9 g/ml, and the aforementioned cubes are a million ml each, so that's 9 Megagrams per hot tub. You could cover a football pitch with hot tubs and only fill them about 1/9th full of copper for the money China is using to build this rail system, which suddenly makes it seem like a pretty good deal. Also, I never knew just how vaguely defined football pitches were : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch " The two goal lines must be between 45 and 90 m (50 and 100 yd) and be the same length.[3] The two touch lines must also be of the same length, and be between 90 and 120 m " You could have a field with over twice as much area as another and they'd both be legal. Edit: I made a huge mathematical error thinking about the copper bit of the above. $36B buys 7.5 million tonnes of copper, which is about 750,000 hot tubs' worth. A football pitch holding 10,000 hot tubs (100x100) could be stacked with 75 layers of hot tubs of copper. Really, I just need to think of a metal that costs $1 per ml.

jdietrich 10y ago

You want a really unfathomable amount of money? The Department of Defence's Joint Strike Fighter program is forecast to cost $1.1 trillion over its lifespan. The program is already $117 billion over budget. China is building a world class railway system for a third of the cost of the budget overrun of a single fighter aircraft project. http://gao.gov/assets/600/591608.pdf http://gao.gov/assets/600/591608.pdf

arkwar 10y ago
World class - maybe, but they have certainly cut corners on their high speed regional network that has resulted in some horrific accidents (that go unreported in the rest of the world). Also, something of like this in the US would be an order of magnitude most expensive to build. The current NEC 'high-speed' plan is around $151 Billion (in 2012 dollars) which is only about a 450 mile run between Boston and DC. Planned to be completed by 2040 (if ever funded), the travel time would still be just over 3 hours to go the ~450 miles.