Opportunity Cost of George W. Bush and 10 Trillion Dollars
Best viewed in full-screen mode
Ten trillion dollars is an unimaginable sum. With this presentation I’ve tried to show a few of the ways to think about a number this large. Add a comment if you can think of another way to use ten trillion.
If you found this slideshow interesting, you might be want to read The Three Trillion Dollar War. Oh, and if you haven’t check out the XO laptop, it’s really worth a look.
P.S. I’m not entirely satisfied with using slideshare for my presentations. If you know of any better alternatives, I’d love to hear from you.
Credits:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/1027863995/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/odalaigh/2332401466/
http://flickr.com/photos/skycaptaintwo/96522428/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmueller
http://www.flickr.com/photos/olpc/2928908291/
http://flickr.com/photos/malias/86009411/
October 16th, 2008 at 9:27 am
That makes me sad and depressed. I want $10 trillion…
Off to read The Three Trillion Dollar War now… thanks :)
October 18th, 2008 at 6:20 am
I can’t see it :( I’m using Swfdec for my Flash plugin…it’s YouTube-capable, but I know it has trouble with other sites’ ways of doing Flash. I remember the DMCA slideshow was done as HTML. If you don’t want to have to manually make the HTML pages for that kind of thing, OpenOffice.org’s Impress can output a slideshow to HTML….or to PDF for that matter.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
W didn’t actually increase the US national debt by $10tn; it was already at something like $7tn when he seized power. Not that burning $3tn is terribly impressive either.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Typo on title page - first slide says ‘what 10 billion dollars could buy’.
Nice choices of examples, interesting stuff. Maybe should put something explaining to those who need it that 18cm = 7inches (near as makes no difference for this anyway).
October 21st, 2008 at 2:34 pm
It says 10 BILLION on the first slide, not trillion.
October 21st, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Thanks for pointing out the error. I’m trying to fix it, but slideshare is being its usual, uncooperative self.
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:04 pm
What gjm said… “Balanced buget” != “no debt”. Bush simply made a bad debt even worse. I’m wondering if we’ll ever elect a president who actually tries to pay off that debt, considering it would require cutting spending and increasing taxes (two things people never like to vote for).
October 24th, 2008 at 12:28 am
Wolfger:
Have you by any chance heard of Mr. Obama? Barack Obama?
October 25th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Well, we all remember the news (it was global!) about the national debt clock running out of numbers. That was, what, 2 weeks ago? And since then, an addition 500bn (that’s half a trillion) has been added to it.
When Clinton finished his 2 terms, he left US National Debt at 5.7trillion. So in his 8 years in power, Bush has managed to double the national debt.
When you look at is a %GDP, he only did half the damage is father and Reagan did before him (when Reagon took power, national debt was at about 35% GDP - Carter, Ford, Kennedy, Ike and Truman, between them, got it down, year on year, from over 90% GDP. Clinton had managed to half the %GDP burdon is his time, and Bush has just put it all back on again.
October 25th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Congress spends the money. Not the President. Read your Constitution.
November 13th, 2008 at 1:29 am
In case anyone cares, using swfdec 0.8.2 instead of 0.8, SlideShare works.
December 9th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
The Solar Pannels struck me. Half of it could make the entire world renewable.. and we could go to Mars aswell, get solar pannels there and start expanding the population over to another planet. It would be an amazing undertaking. If only we had 10 Trill..
December 9th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Well we did have ten trillion dollars. : (
December 10th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
10 Trillion Dollars worth of debt?
December 31st, 2008 at 8:56 pm
10 billion sex robots… mull it over for a while
March 24th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Give every man, woman, and child ON THE PLANET over $1500.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
hookers and blackjack or Joes 10 billion sex robots
May 24th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Yeah, give every person 1000 dollars, and watch as inflation skyrockets. Also, some vast oversimplifications here…
May 25th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
As was pointed out, Bush did not up national debt by 10 trill- it was already at 7 or so. Further, a good chunk of that money was spent on useful stuff (education, social security, healthcare, etc). I mean, he still threw a good couple trill down the hole between the Iraq war and other stuff, but that’s a far cry from 10 trillion.
June 28th, 2009 at 6:13 am
This is only accurate if you assume that al gore or kerry would have kept the debt where it was at the election. Not so.