What Can You Buy With A Trillion Dollars?

The G-20 summit committed to $1.2 trillion in new funds, with the aim of boosting the world economy, cleaning up banks, and increasing trade, among many other things. The stimulus plan is worth more than $800 billion and the second half of the bank bailout package is at $350 billion, which make up the $1.2 trillion, but the very idea of a trillion dollars exceeds what most of our minds, let alone a standard calculator, have the capacity to understand. What does a trillion dollars look like and what else could a trillion dollars buy? Here, is an idea:

See the little man?  This is what it would look like to stand next to a trillion dollars.

A trillion dollars, is a million, million dollars. If you laid one dollar bills end to end, you could make a chain that stretches from earth to the moon and back again 200 times before you ran out of dollar bills! One trillion dollars would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun.

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One trillion dollars in pennies would weigh as much as 2,755,778 Argentinosauruses

What can you do with a trillion dollars?

Well, according to globalissues.org, for only $40 billion you could achieve universal access to basic social services in all developing countries. Right now, every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment. Thats an investment. You could turn your $1 trillion into Canadian grants and then increase your overall revenue. Might also be a smart idea since their currency is less likely to collapse.

Basic education for all: $6 billion
There are 2.2 billion children in the world and 1 billion live in poverty. About 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not enrolled in school in 2005 and 57 percent of them were girls.

Water and sanitation for all: $9 billion
1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. Only 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World.

Reproductive health for all women: $12 billion
90 percent of the 585,000 women who die annually in the world from pregnancy related complications are in developing countries. For every 1000 women of childbearing age (15-49 years) as many as 20 to 30 have an unsafe abortion; and most of these are in developing countries. Read More)
Basic health and nutrition for all: $13 billion
2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized. Every year, more than 20 million low birth weight (LBW) babies are born in the developing world. In some countries, including India and Bangladesh, more than 30 percent of all children are born underweight. Read More

According to the New York Times, with $1.2 trillion you could:
• Double cancer research funding, provide treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is going unmanaged and create a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives, still having more than enough money to sustain these programs for at least a decade.

• You could also drastically increase the city of New Orleans’ reconstruction funds. In December 2008, the average price for a home in the US was $175, 400 - with $ 1 trillion you could buy 5.7 million homes.

• With a trillion dollars a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur

These are all worthy causes, which could greatly benefit from a trillion-dollar-injection.   But let’s pretend the whole “helping others” thing just isn’t your style.  Here’s a list of some of the fun things you could do with a trillion-dollar bankroll.

• With a trillion dollars you could buy your own army of 1 million Asimo Robots.

• With a trillion dollars you could buy out America’s supply of bacon for the next 500 years.

• With a trillion dollars you could buy a few less Asimo robots, and you could coat each one with bacon.  Imagine the pandemonium when you unleash your delicious army of Bacon-Bots into the city.

• With a trillion dollars you could own and operate your own space program with an annual budget of $20 billion for the next 50 years.  That’s $2 billion more than NASA spends each year.

• With a trillion dollars you could afford to indecently propose à la Robert Redford to a million different women.

• With a trillion dollars you could buy every sports team on the planet.

To conclude, you could do a whole lot with a trillion dollars, but if you were to divvy it up among every man, woman and child in America they would only receive $3, 300 each. Could be a smart move though if you give it as a loans and collect interest on it.