I am told that in movies, they actually try not to make the numbers in things like heists too big, because people can't grasp a billion dollars. You have to put the numbers close enough to the average person's frame of reference that they can understand what it buys.
Most people can basically grasp what a million dollars looks like, in consumer goods. If you live in an expensive city, you have a good idea of what you'd buy with, say, $50 million. But unless you yourself are ultrawealthy, you have no emotional grasp of what $1 billion means.
For readers: this is why I often give you some stupid number for context on government figures, like "It's enough to buy a brand-new Ferrari for every member of the Harvard graduating class". It's easier for most people to understand Ferraris than intuit $$$ past 7 figures.
(Not you, dear reader, of course. But other readers).
Anyway, we like to think we're far beyond the cultures that have number systems like "1,2,3,many"--but not so much farther as we think. Which is how mistakes like this get made.
Anyway, we like to think we're far beyond the cultures that have number systems like "1,2,3,many"--but not so much farther as we think. Which is how mistakes like this get made.
The inability to grasp large numbers is also, as @charlescwcooke pointed out, how so many Sanders/Warren supporters believed that we could fund a welfare state that consumes 60-70% of GDP almost exclusively by taxing the top 1%, who collect <20% of national income.
