Mind Boggling Debt
December 16, 2009 | filed in: Politics
The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial in today’s
paper, called “The Audacity of Debt,” in which
they discuss the impending vote by Congress to
raise the national debt ceiling by almost $2
trillion. It got me thinking about the size of
that number.
First, note how much easier it is to write and, more importantly, read “$2 trillion” rather than “$2,000,000,000,000.” There are so many zeros involved in the latter that one has to stop and count them to understand the figure.
Second, how much is $2,000,000,000,000? What’s the best way to visualize it? Is there a way to visualize it?
Here’s one way: imagine an airplane filled with $2,000,000,000,000 separated into bags of a million dollars each. Imagine that the pilot of this airplane takes off and heads due north at a speed of 300 miles per hour. The copilot’s job is to drop one of the bags containing a million dollars out of the airplane every time the plane travels a mile.
Before we go any further, think about how much money a million dollars is. How much difference would a million dollars make to you and your family? How much difference would a million dollars make to a small business or a local charity? Remember that impact.
Back to the airplane dropping a million dollars a minute, how far could the plane travel before the $2,000,000,000,000 ran out? Keep in mind that, at 300 miles per hour, the plane is dropping five million-dollar bags every minute.
A thousand miles? Five thousand miles? 10,000 miles? Around the entire Earth, a distance of 24,860 miles? I am afraid none of these is close. You have to think bigger.
You see, $2,000,000,000,000 is equal to 2,000,000 bags of $1,000,000 each. That right, the plane could travel 2,000,000 miles, or 80 times around the Earth, dropping a million dollars out every 12 seconds, before running out of money.
It would take the plane 6,667 hours to do so, equal to 278 days of continuous, 24/7 flying.
And that’s just the increase in the national debt that Congress will be approving shortly. Shall we talk about the total debt of $14,000,000,000,000?
First, note how much easier it is to write and, more importantly, read “$2 trillion” rather than “$2,000,000,000,000.” There are so many zeros involved in the latter that one has to stop and count them to understand the figure.
Second, how much is $2,000,000,000,000? What’s the best way to visualize it? Is there a way to visualize it?
Here’s one way: imagine an airplane filled with $2,000,000,000,000 separated into bags of a million dollars each. Imagine that the pilot of this airplane takes off and heads due north at a speed of 300 miles per hour. The copilot’s job is to drop one of the bags containing a million dollars out of the airplane every time the plane travels a mile.
Before we go any further, think about how much money a million dollars is. How much difference would a million dollars make to you and your family? How much difference would a million dollars make to a small business or a local charity? Remember that impact.
Back to the airplane dropping a million dollars a minute, how far could the plane travel before the $2,000,000,000,000 ran out? Keep in mind that, at 300 miles per hour, the plane is dropping five million-dollar bags every minute.
A thousand miles? Five thousand miles? 10,000 miles? Around the entire Earth, a distance of 24,860 miles? I am afraid none of these is close. You have to think bigger.
You see, $2,000,000,000,000 is equal to 2,000,000 bags of $1,000,000 each. That right, the plane could travel 2,000,000 miles, or 80 times around the Earth, dropping a million dollars out every 12 seconds, before running out of money.
It would take the plane 6,667 hours to do so, equal to 278 days of continuous, 24/7 flying.
And that’s just the increase in the national debt that Congress will be approving shortly. Shall we talk about the total debt of $14,000,000,000,000?