
Getting our heads around large numbers can be hard. Few of us can comprehend the true scale of difference between a million, a billion and a trillion. But the events of recent months in the US may give us an incentive us to try.
President Joe Biden has succeeded in passing three important acts that are said to be as monumental as Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s. The oddly named US Inflation Reduction Act (which carries the unfortunate acronym IRA and has nothing to do with either terrorism or inflation), the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Chips and Science Act aim to tackle climate change, build critical infrastructure and boost domestic production of semiconductors.