How much is 7 teradollars?

[Ganonator]

In school, we were discussing how much information was in a terabyte. Well, during the lecture, I decided to compare it to something that is the same size, but diferent terms: the US budget deficit.

We'll call it 7 teradollars.

That doesn't sound too bad written like that. But what does it represent?

I'm trying to compile a list. Here's the short list I have, and I'm looking for other similar representations. -
> If a dollar was spent on every 2nd letter, in every book, in the library of Congress, you'd have about 7 teradollars.

> at a dollar a byte, you could store information from 10,000 CD-ROMs, or 1,400 DVDs. Of course, these would have to be completely full with no left over space. This would hold a complete electronic copy of all works in all branches of the University of Arizona.

> a dollar a byte could hold 1.6 million 4-minute MP3s - the amount of songs produced from 1987 to today.

Can you help me make some more comparisons?
Current US Debt >
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/debtc.gif

[AtmaWeapon]

You are about 600 billion dollars short of 7 teradollars. That is, unless you are basing a kilodollar on 1,000. However, bytes are measured in powers of 2, so 1,024 should be your base. :p

And I find it notable that this figure is NOT the deficit but the public debt of the country. More on this later. This site (http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/[/url) is the source of your deficit calculations, I assume. I make this assumption since you have the exact color, size, and font that they used too. I also find it odd that links from that site (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/17/politics/main589170.shtml) mention deficits in the low hundred billions, not trillions.

Now, as I promised, the explanation of public debt from the U.S. Treasury Department (http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdfaq.htm), also linked from your source:


The deficit is the fiscal year difference between what the Government takes in from taxes and other revenues, called receipts, and the amount of money the Government spends, called outlays. The items included in the deficit are considered either on-budget or off-budget. (The off-budget items are typically comprised of the two Social Security trust funds, old-age and survivors insurance and disability insurance, and the Postal-Service fund.) Generally, on-budget outlays tend to exceed on-budget receipts, while off-budget receipts tend to exceed off-budget outlays.

You can think of the total debt as accumulated deficits plus accumulated off-budget surpluses. The on-budget deficits require the Treasury to borrow money to raise cash needed to keep the Government operating. We borrow the money by selling Treasury securities like T-bills, notes, bonds and savings bonds to the public. Additionally, the Government Trust Funds are required by law to invest accumulated surpluses in Treasury securities. The Treasury securities issued to the public and to the Government Trust Funds (Intragovernmental Holdings) then become part of the total debt. For information concerning the deficit, visit the Financial Management Service website to view the Monthly Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the United States Government.

So before we begin beating around ol' Bush (I sense it on the horizon), consider you are not looking at his debt alone, but you are looking at the accumulated debt from bonds and the like dating back to the beginning of the Treasury Department.

My crappy comparison: The internet could not fit in 7 terabytes, but Dr. Meepeek Dashwarti is currently transferring 7 teradollars through my bank account over the INTERNET from Nigeria.