The Correct Ratio of the Income of the 'New Yorker' Reader to the National Debt
Recently, Nick Paumgarten in the New Yorker had someone explain that if you represented the national debt as a basketball, that then the average American's income would be, in comparison, impossible to see with any microscope, no matter how powerful. Not entirely so, claims a physics dude in this week's letters to the editor! This physics dude, using an average income of $91K a year, cough, says that "the size of a grain representing the income of $91,000 is 1/493 the diameter of a nine-inch basketball, or about half a millimetre." See the above to-scale graphic, and be… reassured? Intrigued? Horrified?
cough
I can totally see it, though.
I'm going to need a bigger pixel.
Shouldn't they be using an A.B.A. basketball?
What this really shows me is that I need to clean my computer screen.
I see little specks of income all over that circle.
$91,000?!? Next you will tell me the average New Yorker reader does not want to slap Sasha Frere-Jones upside the head!
Christ. That's 4.5 times my own yearly income.
Then again, I live in Virginia.