Do you think $4 billion is a lot?

[unhappycamper]

I was watching the Travel channel yesterday about the building of the Canadian railroad. It was quite a feat. At the end of the show, they mentioned the mass quantity of materials used – one of them was 2,000,000 tons of steel, which got me to thinking.

2,000,000 tons of steel = 2,000,000 x 2,000 = 4,000,000,000 pounds of steel.

Four billion of anything is a lot. Well, perhaps not.


Four billion dollars pays for 1/3 of month’s worth of occupation bills for Iraq.

Four billion dollars won’t even buy a destroyer.

Four billion dollars will almost buy almost two B-2 bombers.

Four billion dollars is less than half of the $8,800,000,000 on pallets of $100 bills that mysteriously disappeared along with three Chinook helicopters in Iraq.

Four billion dollars is less than three months worth of oil to power up the US military.

Four billion dollars is 80% of the most recent no-bid Halliburton contract.


Looking at it that way, four billion won't buy ya much.

[babylonsister]

1. I "used" to think it was a lot. Now, not so much. nt

[meegbear]

2. But if you had like 4 billion jellybeans or kittens ...

that would be a lot.

[rox63]

3. If $4 billion is not that much

can you lend me a few billion? :P

[AndyTiedye]

4. The MSM Gave the Repigs About $4 Billion in Free Airtime in 2004

[Hydra]

5. Like they said in "1984"

It's better for the ruling class to put all of this labor into things that don't accomplish anything. That way, there's never enough for the workers and they're always too busy to find out how they're being screwed.

Orwell was a f***ing genius/prophet for connecting the dots.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

6. $4,000,000,000 is 67c per person around the world, or $13.33 per American.

It's about 1/675 of the total US expenditure per year, and slightly more than that of the total US revenue.