whyroots

How much is $5 billion? If we're going to be throwing thousands of millions of (hypothetical) dollars around, let's pause to apprehend the scale. Is $5 billion dollars a lot, or very little? The laws governing such difficult-to-fathom sums are Einsteinian: their value is relative.

According to the Forbes list of billionaires, only 203 people in the world know the feeling of possessing $5 billion fortunes. The rest of us can just wonder. Viewed from this perspective, having $5 billion is like catching a rare glimpse of the phoenix. We're talking big money. Type five billion into a calculator and turn it upside down: ooooooooo’s. Indeed.

Jest aside, let's parse a few comparisons. In the universe of U.S. government spending, $5 billion is nothing compared to budget monsters like national defense ($607 billion in 2008) or Medicare ($396 billion). Lower on the priority list, international aid comes in at $14 billion. And down in the $5 billion range, we find the National Science Foundation budget and that of the Judiciary branch. Reason, it seems, is inexpensive.

The 2008 election, the most expensive in history, cost a total of $5.3 billion. Each year, Americans spend approximately $5 billion on Halloween accoutrements, according to the Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions survey. Five billion remains to be spent of the total Hurricane Katrina aid package ($13.4 billion) -- a rare example in which $5 billion buys nothing at all. 

So, is $5 billion a budget bonanza or piddling pocket change? What about at the international level -- what does a $5 billion nation look like? The annual GDP

for Fiji, the idyllic honeymoon destination, is about $5 billion. But so is the annual GDP of another nation, also ringed by white sands and azure water, but somewhat less picturesque: Haiti. Five billion dollars is the value of the IMF loan to prop up Iceland's failing currency. Five billion dollars is what Charles Taylor smuggled out of Liberia. Five billion dollars is what one rogue trader cost French banking giant Société Générale. 

Reader, let's be honest -- this meditation on the worth of $5 billion has hardly been fruitful. I'm scarcely any clearer on the matter than I was before. And yet I haven't even proposed a single use for our hypothetical vault full of cash. I suppose I'll leave that unresolved, pending an epiphany on the $5 billion, the $5 billion, the $5 billion...

-- Sarah Dalglish

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