There are currently 319,151,000 people in the United States. As of October 31, 2014, 150,000,000 of them were employed in full-time positions. At this wonderful time of year, most or all of them are presumably wishing colleagues, friends, and family a “Happy Thanksgiving”, whether they’re doing it from their PCs or phones. What would happen, however, if we collectively agreed to wish each other a “Happy Turkey Day”?

If the average adult types at 40 WPM and average word length is 5 characters, then an adult produces 200 characters in a minute, or one character every 0.3 seconds. Assuming that an average employee produces $67.32 of GDP per hour worked, one extra character – repeated across, say, 25 holiday greetings – amounts to $0.14025 of GDP. With 150,000,000 workers, that one-character difference costs a whopping total of $21,037,500 of GDP.

So if we all wished each other a “Happy Turkey Day,” we would reclaim two characters and $42,075,000 of GDP. “Happy T Day,” which eliminates seven characters, represents a savings of $147,262,500. Taken to the extreme, we would all simply write “HT,” saving 15 characters and $315,562,500 of GDP.

I’ll do my part: wishing all of you an HT :)