Inability to visualize the scale of our national debt
With some needed brain-break time between recruiter calls, I wanted to visualize the national debt. Inspired by the NYT tree-map visualization of our next proposed budget, and unsatisfied with the "if the national debt was dollars it would encircle the earth X times" type of answer. I get it, it's big. Very big. But, how big?
So I started out with a nice slider (now easy in HTML5) and a picture of a crisp new $100. (It's all about the benjamins!) Apply some exponential math to the slider, and whammo... I crashed my browser. No problem, rookie mistake and I'm just exploring, let's have some stacks of $10,000, the amount of a federal bundle of $100 bills. When the amount of images on the screen is too big, switch to the bundles. Problem solved, right? Wrong, browser crashed again. Er, ok. How about stacks of million dollars? Easy, some casino had a stack in a glass case and everyone took pictures. Stacks of billion dollars? An artist put together a stack of bills to show off a billion, and there are some great attempts to get a feel for a billion. Using the picture of the crates of $100 bills from the artist, that would solve my problem, right? Wrong. Browser crashed again.
It is at this point that I realize that I'm falling victim to the exact same issue as everyone else - humans don't have a natural feel for exponentials. Add a few zeros, and it is... um... lots bigger. Multiply this wooden block by 10, thats a row of blocks. x10, a big square of blocks. x10, a big cube of blocks. x10... a big... uh... hypercube? Back to a row of big cubes? Great, now try the 13 zeros needed to express 13 zeros that goes into $17 trillion dollars. Our brain balks and refuses to play.
Every discussion about the debt needs to use something like http://www.usdebtclock.org/ to orient the listener. We are 17 trillion in debt, that's bad. But you know what is worse? $127,000 debt per taxpayer! That's a house in some states! Now we have some basis in just how bad it is, and can start the real discussions on how to slash our deficit.
So I started out with a nice slider (now easy in HTML5) and a picture of a crisp new $100. (It's all about the benjamins!) Apply some exponential math to the slider, and whammo... I crashed my browser. No problem, rookie mistake and I'm just exploring, let's have some stacks of $10,000, the amount of a federal bundle of $100 bills. When the amount of images on the screen is too big, switch to the bundles. Problem solved, right? Wrong, browser crashed again. Er, ok. How about stacks of million dollars? Easy, some casino had a stack in a glass case and everyone took pictures. Stacks of billion dollars? An artist put together a stack of bills to show off a billion, and there are some great attempts to get a feel for a billion. Using the picture of the crates of $100 bills from the artist, that would solve my problem, right? Wrong. Browser crashed again.
It is at this point that I realize that I'm falling victim to the exact same issue as everyone else - humans don't have a natural feel for exponentials. Add a few zeros, and it is... um... lots bigger. Multiply this wooden block by 10, thats a row of blocks. x10, a big square of blocks. x10, a big cube of blocks. x10... a big... uh... hypercube? Back to a row of big cubes? Great, now try the 13 zeros needed to express 13 zeros that goes into $17 trillion dollars. Our brain balks and refuses to play.
Every discussion about the debt needs to use something like http://www.usdebtclock.org/ to orient the listener. We are 17 trillion in debt, that's bad. But you know what is worse? $127,000 debt per taxpayer! That's a house in some states! Now we have some basis in just how bad it is, and can start the real discussions on how to slash our deficit.
I had not seen the US Debt Clock site; amazing, informative, scary! (I hope they can fill in some of the blanks soon.) Maybe if the running debt/taxpayer were in the top toolbar of every browser, so nobody could avoid it ... hmmmm ... ?
ReplyDelete- Seth Hill, Topanga CA