Billions spent on this. Billions spent on that. What does it all look like? Hopefully The Billion Dollar Gram will help.
This image arose out of a frustration with the reporting of billion dollar amounts in the media. That is, they’re reported as self-evident facts, when, in fact, they’re mind-boggling and near incomprehensible without context. But they can start to be understood visually and relatively, IMHO.
(This is one of the first images I created for my book. So a lot of the figures are from 2006/07. I’ve also visually cheated slightly here and there to make everything fit)
I hoping this will be a “living image” that I’ll keep updating all the time. So if you find any interesting, juicy or eye-popping billions, please comment below (with a source). Let’s see how high we can make this image!
121 Comments
I like this visualization a lot. I think here’s a good addition: 60 billion to stop the spread of AIDS http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1118/1?rss=1
Put the Annual cost of the “War on Drugs” on there and the annual cost to house all minor drug-offenders in US Prisons…
The US space program leading to the Apollo moon landing is claimed to have cost about $20 billion in the dollars of the 1960s.
About $2 billion was spent on the Manhattan Project during WW2.
The global armaments industry encourages all the nations to spend a great many billion$, but I’m not sure what the latest figures are
3 Trillion on the Iraq war? Need a bit more information on this, is this the total spent by the US, or includes future cost of rebuilding infrastrcture in Iraq (to what level, to pre-war or to uptopia level?)
Overall the graphs are good, but some data points need to be clearer. Many are unrealistic extratulations, for example the 465 billion to feed and educate all the children is nice, but even if we we would need alot more money to implement it, not to mention you need to get the people to teach and build schools, also you need to supplement the families who would no longer have their children around to do vital work for their families (terrible that they have to do the work, but fact remains that they do, and family fails if the children stop working and start schooling, so that has to be accounted for too.)
As a person who dropped out of Communication Arts for a career in Engineering I thoroughly appreciate and approve of this kind of graphical/technical presentation. I have a question about the scaling of the boxes in the Billion Dollar O Gram, though. It’s reasonable to assume that the area of the boxes is proportional to the dollar value they represent. Upon closer inspection this can’t be true: compare “Facebook” with “Bill Gates” for example. The values differ by a factor of three; the areas by perhaps two. If the boxes aren’t scaled by linear proportion to dollar value, then how are the areas of the boxes determined?
I like the idea, but it’s rubbish because you cheated. And I don’t care how much you cheated. Either I can trust it or I can’t, and I can’t. I’m sorry if your shapes don’t tessellate, but it would be better to use non-rectangles or leave white space than to just throw out the scale and in doing so miss the whole point of your idea.
Also, making one diagram grow organically sounds like a nice idea, but in practice I’m not sure about that either. The huge potential benefit of this is taking values that no-one can get their head around and making them digestible. But now it’s bigger I want to compare Africa’s debt to the US defence budget and I can’t because I have to scroll around. It would be OK on a big sheet of paper, but not on a small screen. I think new thought-provoking diagrams would be better.
On reflection, “rubbish” is a bit strong. Sorry. As I say, I like the idea (and the pretty colours).
A suggestion for a new diagram? I know it’s a bit morbid (and controversial), but for some reason I’ve found it interesting to compare fatalities. For instance we all agree on how horrific 9/11 was, but far more people die on UK roads every year and no-one seems nearly as bothered. A few less die on UK trains though (about 10 (02-04)) although apparently when asked, 67% of drivers thought cars were safest (http://www.railwatch.org.uk/backtrack/rw94/rw094p06.pdf).
I’m confused. The Walmart Profits and the Russian defence budget are about $11. But one is clearly smaller than the other. What gives?
I wouldn’t call it rubbish depending on the exact changes. Because of the grid format, there are going to be situations where adding that extra 7 pixels to get the size exactly right means that you have to leave a 50 pixel white line because you started with a 57×57 pixel square – now a 58×57 with 50 blank on one row.
The purpose of a graphic like this is not to be able to count the pixels in each region to get precise numbers, the purpose is to give a sense of the relative sizes of widely-used numbers.
These visuals are awesome. A great way to show how f-ed up our priorities are as a society. Keep up the good work on all of the visuals.
would be interesting to add:
$$ spent on international aid by US
% of that aid spent purely on Israel
its actually quite a heartbreaking comparison
Completely useless if you don’t lock image real estate to dollar amount, which you didn’t. What gives?
We, the German political magazine DIE GAZETTE, took the liberty to translate the texts in your highky impressive into German.
We are at present asked by the biggest south German daily, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, to lat them reprint the picture with our translation.
Credits (InformationIsBeautiful) will of course be given.
We sincerely hope you agree with this procedure.
Respectfully yours,
Fritz
Nice diagram to show the budget. I will use it to show the budget of regions.
Maybe anybody know some software to produce such nice pictures?
This is a great way to visualize our priorities.
i’d add some indices of the expenditure on huge scientific experiments (such as the Large Hadron Collider) !
Excellent book, but on p.26 of Information is Beautiful your diagram shows a mobile charger generates 0.26 tons of CO2 a year and a medium car 2.6tons. Surely a mobile charger is less than a tenth of a car? Decimal point inaccuracy? Thing is that people think turning their charger off will help save the world – this error supports that. The fact is it won’t – makes you feel good but has no noticeable effect on CO2 production. Not driving the car does!
I think the total debt African HAS to pay to the Western world should be green (spending) not orange (the color of giving).
have you come across this http://www.intac.net/a-comparison-of-dedicated-servers-by-company_2010-04-13/?
No block for 911 economic costs? As much $2 trillion reported by some estimates:
http://www.iags.org/costof911.html
Sept 11 is probably better described as a human tragedy, but then that is probably true for many of the blocks on the Billion Dollar Gram as is.
This is on a similar theme a list of 100 ways the €25b which was used to save a failing Irish bank could have been spent. Puts the number into perspective….
93 Asphalt every trunk and regional road (110,000km) of substandard countries in sub-Saharan Africa
89 Construct six large hadron colliders, one for each Green Party TD
75 Fly the adult population of Ireland to Las Vegas, and give everyone €10,000 to gamble with
69 Buy a pint of Guinness for everyone in the world to celebrate Arthur’s Day (and it would count as exports)
64 Host two Olympics Games, based on the London 2012 cost of €11.2 billion
51 Buy Steve Jobs (€25 billion is the actuarial value on his life) and get him to work for Ireland Inc
28 Supply the water needs of Galway city, for a year . . . with Perrier water
8 Reduce the pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools to 1:10 for the next 20 years
http://www.sbpost.ie/newsfeatures/100-ways-to-spend-the-anglo-25000000000-51081.html
28 Trackbacks
Gráfico para entender los miles de millones gastados en diferentes cosas…
Gráfico muy ilustrativo para hacernos una idea del dinero (billones de $) gastado o ganado en diferentes cosas. OÃmos hablar de cantidades muy grandes de dinero (miles de millones) y no somos capaces de entenderlo y ponerlo en su posición. Con éste grá…
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wo der große globale cash hingeht…
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http://www.informationisbeautiful.net...
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