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4:44:00 PM EDT
BIG BUCKS
MORALITY AND THE LAW CXLIV
By Stephen Ellis
BILLIONS AND TRILLIONS
Nobody asked me, but…
It’s all in the numbers. People often ask me why someone would spend a hundred million dollars to try and get a job that pays $400,000 per year. Granted, that the job will last for four years…a total of $1,600,000…but is that reason enough to spend a hundred million dollars? Of course, I’m talking about the Presidency of the United States. Both McCain and Obama will have spent a hundred million (or more) in campaigning to get the job. Apparently, they both think it’s worth it.
Of course, there are other benefits to being the President: You get free rent…free transportation…all expenses paid…and the world recognizes you as the most powerful person in the world. And then, there are minor benefits like being able to appoint 50,000 of your friends to influential government jobs. And, of course, there is the benefit that you will have control over trillions of dollars in government spending.
In fact, the United States presently is about 9 trillion dollars in debt from our general fund. We should recognize that we owe this money to ourselves, and with one single stroke of the pen we could wipe-out the entire national debt. There would be a lot of people holding Government Bonds, Notes and Treasury Bills that would be very unhappy about this, but understanding the complexities of our national debt is not the purpose of today’s blog. Rather what I want you to look at is the numbers our government throws-around:
Everything spent by our government is in billions and trillions. Yet so few of us know just how large those numbers really are. Let me give you some examples:
One billion seconds ago, it was the year 1959. One billion minutes ago the Middle East was expecting the arrival of a Messiah. One billion hours ago, the Earth was inhabited by dinosaurs.
Beginning to see how large a billion really is? Yet our Congress thinks nothing of passing bills requiring the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars…most of which goes into the pockets of special interest groups.
What about a “trillion”. When I was teaching school, I used to ask my math classes how long it would take to count to one trillion…assuming that the counter counted three numbers every second throughout the day and night and never stopped for food, sleep or bathroom breaks…just continuously counting three numbers per second: Usually I got responses of from one week to ten years. In fact, it would take approximately 11,000 years to count to one trillion. Follow the simple math and confirm this for yourself:
At three numbers per second, that would be 180 numbers per minute (3 times 60 seconds); and 10,800 numbers per hour (180 times 60 minutes), and 259,200 numbers per day (10,800 times 24 hours). That equals 94,608,000 numbers per year (259,200 times 365). In ten years (94,608,000 times 10) that would make 940,608,000; in a hundred years 940,608,000 times 10) that would be 9,406,800,000; in a thousand years, (9,406,800,000 times 10) we get to 94,406,800,000, and in ten thousand years (944,068,000,000) we start to approach one trillion.
Our country has a national debt exceeding 9 Trillion Dollars. I think it’s time we started to recognize the enormity of these numbers and not simply view them as some words bandied-about our halls of Congress.
As I said…nobody asked me
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It's true, most people don't understand the enormity of those numbers. I think you will enlighten a lot of people through this week's blog.
7/7/08 4:44 AM