What's a Trillion Dollars?
In recent discussions about the national debt we hear about trillions of dollars so commonly that we fail to be impressed at the enormity of this figure. The National Debt now stands at about $43 trillion, while the deficit in 2024 (the excess of spending over income for that year) was “only” 1.8 trillion.
Consider this: If you begin counting at the rate of one per second, it will take you just 11.6 days to reach one million, assuming no time off for eating or sleeping. Not too bad, really.
To reach one billion, however, you will have to keep counting for 31.7 YEARS!
You may have guessed that a trillion would take considerably longer - how about 31,700 years? That would put us in the late Paleolithic era, when humans were first getting pretty good at making tools out of stone or bone.
The current debt of $43 trillion amounts to $100,000 per person, including children. Given this, I am beginning to wonder if cutting taxes for the wealthy is such a good idea.
Let's try counting at the speed of light. There are 31,536,000 seconds a year. At 186,000 mi/sec (rounded down) there are 6 trillion miles that light travels in a year. If each mile were $1 it would take 7.1 (rounded down) years to pay off $43 T of debt. I thought this would make the numbers more manageable. I was wrong. We have a GDP of only $30T, we don't travel at 186,000 mi/sec and every bit of that GDP is already spoken for. Just as the numbers are not manageable, neither is the debt. Tax cuts for people and institutions that don't need it and add about $5 T (over ten years) to a debt that already can't be repaid ? sure! We're supposed to grow our way out of this by placing tariffs (a tax) on an entire planet. why not! No wonder Musk wants to go to Mars.