black…MYstory

Sometimes, it’s hard to wrap one’s brain around the amount of money being spent in on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, a while back, Xinjo.com published some illustrations to give some idea about what this looks like. I’d suggest visiting the site for the full listing but, here’s a quick and dirty excerpt of what they offer in this piece.

The first photo shows what $9 million might look like with the following caption:

Nine Million dollars … The pile is 5 feet tall, 10 feet long, and 6¼ feet wide. A single stack of dollar bills in this amount would be 3,000 feet high.

This horde is comparable in size to a single compact car. You could buy 489 of them for the amount, though, with enough cash left over to fill up the gas tanks of 162 of them.

But this amount of money is more than four times what you can expect to earn in your entire life, if you are an American with a college degree.

But, wait, there’s more…Try to imagine $87 billion:

Eighty-Seven Billion dollars … This is what the President asked for on September 7th, 2003. It is 100 feet tall, 250 feet long, and 125 feet wide. A stack of singles would be 28,998,000 feet, or over 5,492 miles, or a round-trip between Washington DC and Los Angeles, California. (2,650 miles, one-way).

A Boeing 737-200 jet is 100 feet long. You could fit 2 of those jets nose to nose along the length of this pile, and have room to spare.

If we spread the $87 billion over an American football field, we would not be able to see much of the game. The players would be buried in 55 feet of money.

$87 billion is more than all of the states’ current budget deficits, combined. $87 billion is more than twice the amount we’re spending on Homeland Security.

Yes, that’s the same 5′ 10″ man standing next to that stack.

Now, try to visualize $315 billion:

Three-hundred-fifteen billion dollars …

Update : July 21, 2006

This is the amount of money the US has allocated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be spent by September 30, 2006, the end of the fiscal year. And the Senate is working on a spending bill that will add another $50 billion more in spending for 2007.

This pile is 125 feet wide, 200 feet deep, and 450 feet tall.

450 feet is the height of a 38-story building. It’s the hieght of the Millenium Wheel in London. It is also the height of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas and the Louisiana State Capitol Building.

If you were to stack the money in a single stack, your stack would be 19,887 miles tall, enough to wrap the Moon at its equator almost 3 times.

Now, remember, this is as of July 2006. This does not include the $190+ billion that this president is now asking for in regards to these wars. Imagine increasing the size of this stack by more than 50%.

The real kick in the head is that none of this is in the nation’s budget. All this is funded by supplemental requests and is being paid for with borrowed money.

So, can we really afford to stay at war?

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