Adjusted for inflation, here are some other massive expenditures:
- * The Marshall Plan ($115.3 billion)
- * The space race ($237 billion)
- * The Korean War ($454 billion)
- * The New Deal ($500 billion)
- * The invasion of Iraq ($597 billion)
- * The Vietnam War ($698 billion)
Here are some thought experiments:
- If you took collected a $1 million per day, ever day from the birth of Christ, in 2009 you'd only be about 3/4 of the way to a trillion.
- If you got $1 every second, it would take almost 32,000 years to get to a trillion.
- If you stacked a trillion dollar bills on top of each other, it would go 68,000 miles into space--1/3 of the way to the moon.
- If you took 100-dollar bills and put them side to side, it would circle the equator 38.9 times
HT: James Grant via Dustin Shramek
Update: Comparison with previous expenditures fixed. Sorry about that.