MONEY MEASUREMENT MANIA

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V26 2023 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 26, Number 51, December 17, 2023, Article 32

A couple of articles in the popular press this week included actual and theoretical depictions of the dimensions of large amounts of money in their physical forms. This one from the Wall Street Journal interviews a maker of stage money, the fake prop cash used in theater and movie performances. -Editor

Juan Amaya has done hundreds of millions of dollars in cash business—fake dollars, that is.

Amaya runs Prop Movie Money, a business in Miami that makes look-alike bills for film and TV productions. His company's products have starred in the Fast & Furious franchise and shows such as Billions.

Makers of prop money alter visual details such as Benjamin Franklin's portrait to prevent it from being seen as counterfeit currency. Still, the result is pretty convincing.

Two shoeboxes—that is roughly how big $1 million in $100 bills is when stacked up, Amaya said.

He first learned how puny seven figures can seem when he and his co-workers started the company. They put $1 million of cash, in fake bills, on a table in the office as an inspiration for their new venture.

I was a little disappointed, Amaya said. I remember thinking that a million dollars was going to be from the floor to the ceiling, just covering up a room with money. And that was not the case at all.

He added that being around fake cash all the time made money a less taboo topic of conversation between him and his co-workers.

The majority of real dollars aren't physical, and we never get to touch much of what we spend. Money doesn't take up space the way it used to, its size and shape less prominent.

Maybe movie money has a place offscreen - a legal one helping people visualize their finances and financial goals. -Editor

Amaya said he and some of his colleagues use their product as a visual aid while working on their personal budgets.

In Amaya's case, he and his fiancée set up stacks of prop money to visualize their monthly expenses, with piles representing groceries and rent.

Seeing it is far better than just writing it on a notepad or keeping it on a spreadsheet, he said. When you see numbers on a screen, it does not have the same impact.

The exercise has prodded Amaya to put more money into savings each month. When he saw the pile representing their bank accounts, he remembers thinking, I'd like this to be a little bit taller.

Might not be too late to order some stocking-stuffers for your budget-challenged friends and relatives... -Editor

At the other end of the spectrum, a completely non-numismatic Washington Post article provides some interesting back-of-the-envelope estimates of the physical reach of a lot of one dollar bills. The results would be very different (duh, two orders of magnitude smaller) with hundred dollar notes - an exercise left for the reader. -Editor

If we were to head to our local Bank of America and ask for $936 million in ones — perhaps giving the branch a heads-up on our request, just as a courtesy — the result would be a stack of bills that soared more than 63 miles into the sky. The boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space, known as the Karman line, sits 62 miles above Earth's surface. So our stack of Trump penalties would extend 1.6 miles into space.

If we were instead to lay those bills end to end, they would wrap around the entire planet. And wrap around it again. And again. And then wrap around it nearly two-thirds of the way yet again.

Of course, you'd have a bit of a problem just moving the bills around. The total would weigh about as much as 2½ Boeing 747s fueled for takeoff.

To read the complete article, see:
The high costs of election denial (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/16/high-costs-election-denial/)

And then there's this recent Instagram reel from Stack's Bowers showing a million dollars in ten dollar bills. -Editor