How trivial is a trillion dollars?

Column by Bobby Cook

Back in the 60s, when I was a young man in school, my professor told a few jokes about our national debt.  I remember none of the jokes, but his grasp of the danger was prophetic.  The dept was approximately $311 billions, but he was already sounding the alarm about the danger of debt.  I remember how he struggled to get us to visualize how large a billion dollars is.  He told us that the typical person's heart will beat its one billionth beat at age 27.  There is no way to check this fact, but one billion seconds is 32 years so it sounds right.  The professor had to resort to such illustrations because a billion was too large a number for the class to comprehend.

When I studied chemistry in 1964, my class was taught that we could ignore one part per 1000.  An error of one part per 1000 was considered inconsequential.  So using that as our standard, how big is a thousand dollars?  A thousand dollars is so large that it makes one dollar seem insignificant.

Moving up the ladder, what is a million?  A million is a thousand thousand.  It's the number so large that it makes one thousand dollars seem inconsequential.

Moving another step up the ladder, what is a billion?  A billion is a thousand million, or it's a number so large that it makes one million dollars seem inconsequential.

A friend once commented to me that Bill Gates had $60 billion.  I jokingly commented that wasn't so much.  It was only 60 thousand million dollars.  Have you ever heard a congressman talk about billions of dollars?  In any such conversation, amounts of only a few million or less will be treated like pocket change.

Today, our national debt is around $13 trillion.  So how much is a trillion dollars?  A trillion dollars is a thousand billion or a million million dollars.  It's an amount so large that it makes one billion dollars seem inconsequential. 

The governor of California once stated that $5 billion dollars wasn't a lot of money.  It's true, when we are talking about trillions of dollars.  A trillion dollars is so large that a billion dollars seems like a trivial amount. 

When politicians speak about trillions of dollars, they speak as though any amount less than a billion dollars is pocket change.  They figuratively toss around a billion dollars like I would toss parking meter change into the ashtray of my car.

Our nation can be compared to a frog sitting in a pot of water.  It doesn't notice the rising temperature until it's too late.  We have gradually become desensitized to money.  There was a time when every dollar amount was important.  Eventually we evolved to million dollar budgets where a thousand dollars seemed trivial.  Later, when we arrived at billion dollar budgets, a million dollars became the new trivial amount. 

Now that we have crossed the trillion dollar threshold, a billion dollars is the current trivial amount.

Today our politicians seem to think it's hardly worth the effort to save a billion dollars.  It's such a small amount.

Congress is now debating the national budget for this year.  It will require borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars more even after the proposed budget cuts.  Congress just doesn't get it.  They don't seem to know what every citizen knows instinctively, that the budget must be balanced.  To not balance the budget now is irresponsible and I believe criminal, passing the debt on and stealing from our children and grandchildren.  At the moment, Congress is shamefully oblivious and seems to be content to mortgage our future and steal from children as yet unborn.

Our congressman, Cliff Stearns, is facing this critical decision now.  He needs to hear from all of us today, "No More Deficit Spending."  Call Congressman Cliff Stearns' aid now at 352-337-0003.  It's important to be polite but it's equally important to be firm, "Balance the Budge Now."

In summary, our national debt is in the trillions of dollars.  It's important to remember just how big a trillion is.    

• a million seconds  =  12 days
• a billion seconds  =  32 years
• a trillion seconds  =  32,000 years

A trillion is a thousand billion or a million million.  It is so large that it makes a billion dollars seem to be a trivial amount.  It trivializes a million dollars to the status of pocket change or parking meter money.  It's urgent that all of us call Congressman Cliff Stearns today.

Congressman Cliff Stearns will either be a part of the solution or he is the problem.  Your voice can make a difference.