From the earth to the moon Twice around the earth on my taxpayer credit card [corrected]

Mrs. R. made the very same comment that Echidne of the Snakes did regarding John McCain's prescription of how to fix the US health care system:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation. (Quoted by Paul Krugman, New York Times, from McCain's article Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, just published. Bad timing?)

Oh good, Mrs. R. said. Now we'll finally get socialized medicine.

I guess she can be excused. She's still giddy from learning she owns one of the largest insurance companies in the world. With the new found money from that purchase, she (or in this case agents acting on her behalf) are going on a buying spree. The credit limit on her taxpayer ID card has just been raised to $700 billion.

Mrs. R. isn't used to thinking in numbers like that (our previous credit card limits were only a fraction of that -- like one ten millionth), so she wanted me to help her understand how big that number really was. "Suppose," said I, "you wanted to stack up $100 dollar bills. If you had 7 billion of them, and each bill was somewhere around 0.1 mm thick and you could compress the stack so there was no space between the bills, it would extend upward about 70 million meters, or 44,000 miles. Of course that's in $100 bills. Since the distance from the earth to the moon is about 240,000 miles, by going to the bank (if there are any left), you could change your $100 bills for $20 bills and just about make it all the way to the moon."

"That's awesome," Mrs. R. said, Then she paused, "I guess being super rich is scarier than I though. Because I'm scared to death."

"So am I, sweetheart. So am I."

Correction: In the comments, anon has pointed out that my 44,000 mile figure is correct but for $1 bills. That means that you could only get part way to the moon by climbing up a pile of dollar bills. So that's a pretty big mistake on my part. On the other hand, a stack of bills 44,000 miles high isn't exactly green cheese, either. Still, Mrs. R. is laughing at me. As she should.

The circumference of the earth is about 24,000 miles. Therefore you can almost go around the earth twice in $1 bills. So I've corrected the title, too.