I was thinking earlier how to conceptualize $55 trillion, which is about how much wealth the US has.

Since a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier costs about $4 billion, at least the old ones, that means you could make about 10,000 of them (assuming it isn’t ‘phantom’ wealth).

At about 1000 feet long each, this means they would stretch for 2000 miles. Or about 1/10th the earth’s circumference. But aircraft carriers are a bit expensive and maybe you could find something cheaper to make, since while this might be visible from space it would only be if you knew where to look.

The Republican party is at similar low historical levels of popularity. The point somewhat holds, but it seems more to disillusionment with the political process. As seen in NYT polls (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/19/us/politics/20120419_poll_docs.html), people think O has good intentions but is not any more likely to fix problems with the economy.

…from now on, if you want to say “trillion,” say “one thousand billion” or “one million million,” or “one thousand thousand thousand thousand.” Our national debt, then, would go from $15.8 trillion to $15,800 billion. Doing this would show, among other things, that even cutting $100 billion from our debt would bring us down only to $15,700 billion.”

Maybe there’s something to this! Perhaps by using this “thousand billion” terminology people might come to understand that while the entire Nation has a debt of $15,700 billion, a tiny portion (5%) of the Nation has wealth of almost three times that, a wealth in excess of $40,000 billion and, due the powerful forces of “trickle down economics,” they have left almost another $20,000 billion for the other 95% of the population to divide up amongst themselves.

Thought you might find it interesting.