One Trillion is No Small Number
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Economy, Senate, StimulusThe number one trillion is thrown around a lot these days. That’s 1,000,000,000,000 — a number so large it’s very difficult to put into context. Perhaps that’s why there has been and continues to be so little concern over our $10 trillion debt. Or over some of the numbers being suggested for the stimulus..
But let’s just stop and consider how big a number we’re actually talking about. Here’s some good examples of what a trillion really means:
1 trillion $1 bills stacked together would reach 68,000 miles, a third of the way to the moon.
If you spent a million dollars every day for 2,000 years, you’d only spend about 3/4 of a trillion.
A million seconds is about 11½ days. A billion seconds is about 32 years, and a trillion seconds is 32,000 years.
You get the idea. We’ve moved past the fathomable. That’s not an argument that we should halt stimulus plans. But we should be profoundly aware of the unprecedented size of what we’re undertaking, as well as the gigantic hole of debt we’ve already dug. Those Senators who are cautious about the proposed stimulus package are right to be so. This is not a matter to be leapt into blindly. We need to get this right because we likely won’t be able to afford to do it again.
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February 5th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Stop Allen — This isn’t about 1 Trillion dollars, this is about Joe the Plumber and Rush. How can we hide the ball and polarize the issue if your hell bent on talkin’ numbers?
February 5th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Or you could give a million people a million bucks. That would allow the US to give one out of every ~300 people in this country a million dollars. That is lottery odds that people could get behind.
I think we need a stimulus package, but we if are going to lay out this kind of borrowed cash, we need make sure we get the best bang for the buck either in new jobs which can be sustained over time, or at least investment which pays for itself over the long haul.
February 5th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Too bad most folks are both numb to concerns about debt and close to functionally innumerate when it comes to even basic economics.
I don’t think most people are willing to tighten their belts. Not voluntarily. What will it take for the government to rein in its own runaway spending? Quite possibly it will take a substantial adverse international investor reaction to the greatly increased scope of our deficit spending… .
Reduced demand for our bonds and bills (laons IOW) amid default and devaluation worries will lead to the government needing to deliver higher interest rates. And then interest rates will have to rise on everything, raising the price of capital and forcing lending back to higher standards for granting loans.
People will behave responsibly when it’s not that optional.
February 5th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I could put 10-15 people to work if I opened a small business with $1 million in startup capital, not to mention that I’d use probably 50% of that money paying for goods and services from others in the first year. So the Donklephant Giveaway Stimulus Plan will immediately save or create 15 million jobs. That’s five times better than Obama’s plan! I like it.
February 5th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I prefer to think of a trillion as “one million million.” I even write that on my own site now. It’s not as colorful as your examples, but it’s short….
February 6th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
I don’t care how big a million million is, it was worth it to preserve freedom for Iraq and provide jobs and bridges and schools “over there.”
What? 2 million million? Well, still worth it.
February 6th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Alan,
I just want to say that I really appreciate your effort to try put this into some understandable perspective. It is clear that most people have lost all concept of what these numbers mean. Perhaps it is actually impossible for mere humans to truly grasp it.
In ancient Egyptian numerological system, the largest number was represented by a pictogram of an astonished man. It was a number too big to comprehend. You could take most of the arguments around this pork barrel spending bill, substitute quadrillion or septillion or gazillion for trillion and it would not change the supporters rationale one bit.
Maybe it’ll help people to understand when we are paying for haircuts with million dollar bills somewhere down the road.
February 7th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
[...] $827B and will pass with the help of 2 or 3 Republican senators, knocking a fully interest loaded $1.1 trillion hole in the deficit. I guess that makes it bipartisan [...]