> Had this worked on you it would have at least gotten you to admit it is a big deal.
But as other commenters noted, how big a deal it is does not have very much to do with the volume of $100 bills.
I can do the same visualization with bananas. Apparently the US imports about 4 million tons of bananas per year[1].
One shipping container contains 17 tons of bananas[2], and measures about 5x2x2 meters [3]. So we need 2.3e5 containers. Stack them on a football field, and they stretch one kilometer into the sky!
From this, we conclude that the US banana dependence is a much bigger deal that the (comparatively trifling) budget deficit. Of course, it would be a different matter if the deficit was printed in $1 bills instead of $100 bills...
But as other commenters noted, how big a deal it is does not have very much to do with the volume of $100 bills.
I can do the same visualization with bananas. Apparently the US imports about 4 million tons of bananas per year[1]. One shipping container contains 17 tons of bananas[2], and measures about 5x2x2 meters [3]. So we need 2.3e5 containers. Stack them on a football field, and they stretch one kilometer into the sky!
From this, we conclude that the US banana dependence is a much bigger deal that the (comparatively trifling) budget deficit. Of course, it would be a different matter if the deficit was printed in $1 bills instead of $100 bills...
[1] http://www.unctad.org/infocomm/anglais/banana/market.htm#imp... [2] http://smallfarmersbigchange.coop/2011/02/21/farm-to-kitchen... [3] http://www.srinternational.com/standard_containers.htm