The International Cessna^® 170 Association

I will try to keep this non-partisan.

When talking about bailouts and stimulus packages the media throws around numbers in the billions as if they were talking about grains of sand. If my calculations are correct and I consider the bank bailout and the stimulus package then we are talking about almost 1.6 trillion dollars. It is very easy to verbalize 1.6 trilion dollars but exactly how much is that and what does that mean to we citizens? If you take 1.6 trillion and divide it by the population of the U.S. (the true owners of this debt) we get $5228.80 per man, woman and child (this doesn't include the national debt).

Now if we were to instead give that back in the form of flight lesson coupons or avgas coupons, we could stimulate an aviation based economy! Now that would be a good use of tax payer money!

Plagarized info:

One trillion is 1,000,000,000,000 — 10 to the 12th power, or a thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand. To put things in perspective, current estimates put the number of stars in the Milky Way at somewhere between 100 and 400 billion. The U.S. population is slightly over 303 million, and the world population is around 6.6 billion.

$1 trillion would be enough money to buy about a 1,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies for every person in the United States. A trillion barrels of oil would — at current consumption levels — fuel the world for about 33 years.

How much is a trillion?

A trillion is a very, very big number, and I think it would be worth spending a couple of minutes trying to get our arms around the concept.

First, a numerical review.

A thousand is a one with three zeros after it.

A million is a thousand times bigger than that and it’s a one with six zeros after it. At this level I can really get my mind around the difference between these two numbers. A million dollars in the bank is a very different concept from a thousand dollars in the bank. I get that.

A billion then is a thousand times bigger than a million, and it’s a one followed by 9 zeros.

And a trillion is a thousand times bigger than that, and it’s a one followed by 12 zeros.

So a trillion is a thousand billions, which means it is a million millions. You know what? I don’t know what that means! I can’t visualize that, so let’s take a different tack on this.

Suppose I gave you a thousand dollar bill and said you and a friend had to spend it all in a single evening out on the town. You’d have a pretty good time.

Now suppose you had a stack of thousand dollar bills that was four inches in height. If you did, you know what? Congratulations, you’d be a millionaire.

Now suppose you wanted to enter the super-elite of the wealthy and have a billion dollars. How tall of a stack of thousand dollar bills would that be?

The answer is a stack only 358 feet high.

Now how about a stack of thousand dollar bills to equal a trillion dollars? How tall would that stack be? Think of an answer.

Well, that stack would be 67.9 miles high.

And I meant stack, not laid end to end or anything cheesy like that. A solid stack of thousand dollar bills, 67.9 miles high. Now that’s a trillion dollars.

That still doesn’t do it for you?

Okay, I want you to imagine that you’re in a car on a roadway that is lined at the side with a sideways stack of thousand dollar bills. A nice, compact, rectangular column of thousand dollar bills is snaking along the roadside next to you as you drive.

You drive along brrrrrrrrrrrrr without stopping for a little more than an hour, and the entire way there’s that stack of thousand dollar bills right next you, on the side of the road, the whole way.

Said another way, the amount of money created in the past 4.5 months in our economic system, if it had been printed up as thousand dollar bills and stacked along the side of the road, would stretch from Springfield, Massachusetts to Albany, New York.

So there it is. Either you can visualize the stack better by driving along next to it, or by standing on top if it, or any other way you wish to express this statement.

But make no mistake, a trillion is a very, very big number and we should not be lulled into complacency simply because it is too big to really get our minds around.

let's see if I'm not too fuzzy here that would be 1600000000 amu's
50 amu's = (1) c-170

This would be 32,000,000 170's

W.

Just to keep things in perspective, the government estimates the US GDP for 2008 to be in the neighborhood of $14-1/2 trillion. And a buck is probably worth less than a tenth of what it was when I was in my twenties.

John

jrenwick wrote:Just to keep things in perspective, the government estimates the US GDP for 2008 to be in the neighborhood of $14-1/2 trillion. And a buck is probably worth less than a tenth of what it was when I was in my twenties.

John

And every day we print another dollar........It becomes, just that much more worthless.....We should have never gone off the Gold standard.....Brad

There is a story that tells of an example of inflation:

Inflation got so bad in the story that it took a whole wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread.

One day a guy takes a wheelbarrow full of money to the store and finds the wheelbarrow is too wide to fit thru the grocery store entrance-door. So he looks right and left, and seeing no one near, he dashes down the aisle, picks up a loaf of bread, and races to the check-out counter, grabs the store-clerk and rushes the clerk out the front door to get the money and... to his great relief....
... the money is still there. However, someone has stolen the wheelbarrow.

It's a great example of how government can take a valuable commodity... like paper.... and make it worthless by applying ink.

When is the last time you entered a 5,10,&15 cent store???
Remember my dad explaning that the store only sold items at prices less than 15 cents.
That had to have been in the early 50s', about when our planes were made.

Roesbery wrote:When is the last time you entered a 5,10,&15 cent store???

Remember my dad explaning that the store only sold items at prices less than 15 cents.
That had to have been in the early 50s', about when our planes were made.

We had them, they were called a 5 and dime stores or better known in my neck of the woods as Ben Franklin Stores.

George
Where did all the honest, ethically correct politicians go.........maybe there never were any. Growing up in a jarhead house it was, God, Country, Family....baseball, apple pie and motherhood.
When did "me first,screw the rest" start....I must have been gone or something cause it sure snuck up on me. Anyway these days I try not to listen to the news, work hard, and take care of my family. Maybe in 2 years... if the county holds together that long, we can vote all the greedy crooks out and replace them with new crooks, doesn't really matter which "party" they come from they're all the same.

W.

W.J.Langholz wrote: George
.... When did "me first,screw the rest" start....I must have been gone or something cause it sure snuck up on me. Anyway these days I try not to listen to the news, work hard, and take care of my family....
W.

I think that started when we first got two political parties. The other party is always guilty.

So how high would 1.6 trillion 170s be? Stacked of course.
Or better yet, if the money were spent wisely on 1.6 trillion scantily clad ladies holding a cold picture of beer in a line starting at my table, how long would that be?
David

dacker wrote:So how high would 1.6 trillion 170s be? Stacked of course.
Or better yet, if the money were spent wisely on 1.6 trillion scantily clad ladies holding a cold picture of beer in a line starting at my table, how long would that be?
David

I don't know but that bottom 170 better have Pponk and 185 legs.

How long would WHAT... be?

A cold picture of beer:

Well, since you pointed it out... I guess I would take the cold PITCHER of beer!
John, how did you know my favorite flavor... of beer that is?

I dunno, I always thought "beer" and "St. Pauli Girl" were synonyms on this forum!

jrenwick wrote:I dunno, I always thought "beer" and "St. Pauli Girl" were synonyms on this forum!

It became the favored flavor when Ol'Gar ABSCONDED WITH A WHOLE TRAILER-LOAD of it from the Galveston Convention and RAN OFF TO LOOEASYANA with it NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN!

I thought he'd a least invited us all to a fly-in to finish off the convention stash.... but no... he KEPT IT ALL TO HISSELF!

He needs to be stripped nekkid and whalloped with a board unless he hosts a fly-in soon! (Well...take back that "nekkid" part. We don't want to skare the fish in the lake!)