For almost everyone in the world, $1,000,000,000 is a lot of money. But when we're talking about government spending in economies as large as California and the United States, a billion dollars doesn't seem like that much money. Let's compare what this much money looks like in various contexts: Amount of revenue generated by Amazon.com, Inc. every 2 days. The Gross Domestic Product of American-Samoa during 2016. If you invested $1,000,000,000 in the stock market on January 1, 1970 your investment would now be worth about $122,300,000,000. Amount of money spent by the US Federal government every 9.6 hours for Social Security benefits. The Gross Domestic Product generated each day by the State of Indiana in 2016. $1,000,000,000 in July of 1998 is the equivalent of $1,544,154,000 in August 2018. The amount of money spent each day by the US Federal government on social safety net and low-income programs like SNAP (Food Stamps), the Earned Income Tax Cred