Thanks for proving me correct. You did totally miss the point!

>>>With inflation, population and GDP growth etc. that's a stupid statistic.
>>>
>>>A much better one would be a comparison of per-capita deficit spending vs. per-capita GDP. It would be interesting to compare that to the Great Depression, the periods during and post-WWII etc.
>>
>>I disagree. The comparisons you mention would be of interest but to say that a congress in 2.5 years has spent more money than spent
>>over the last 200 + year is a "stupid" statistic, indicates you maybe missing the point. :) Thats a freakin big deal statistic, if you ask me.
>
>No... Mark Twain said it best.
>
>How many Americans were there in the 1st Congress? How much did a dollar buy back then? What was the average yearly wage? How much did the federal government of the day spend on the military, and nation building/rebuilding after the Revolution?
>
>The CIA World Factbook claims there are a little over 310M Americans with a per capita GDP of $46,000.
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>So, $3.2T divided by 310M Americans is a little more than $10,000 per capita, or a little over 22% of annual GDP.
>
>Here's a cool, and meaningful (but possibly apocryphal) statistic of that type: the early ENIAC computer ran from 1945 to 1955. It was estimated that during that time it performed more arithmetic calculations than had been performed by all of mankind prior to its invention.
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>http://books.google.ca/books?id=emmitTbOoFgC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=more+calculations+than+all+of+humanity+before+world+war+2&source=bl&ots=FhHpKXDFTE&sig=5RjgLld_eDyQJZC7iAdkL_MAZmg&hl=en&ei=9P4aTfSQPIyosQOE1M3QAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false