How big is a trillion?

Old Navy Vet | 11 March 2010 | OldNavyVet

[ETL]

Think of it in terms of GDP. Since GDP is around 12T

Do you mean national debt?

[ETL]

“Current-dollar GDP — the market value of the nation’s output of goods and services — increased
6.3 percent, or $219.6 billion, in the fourth quarter to a level of $14,461.7 billion. In the third quarter,
current-dollar GDP increased 2.6 percent, or $90.9 billion.”

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2010/pdf/gdp4q09_2nd.pdf
__________________

U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK

“The Outstanding Public Debt as of 11 Mar 2010 at 11:47:24 PM GMT is:
$12, 548, 640, 578, 099. 93 (12.5 Trillion)

The estimated population of the United States is 307,990,676
so each citizen’s share of this debt is $40,743.57.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$3.96 billion per day since September 28, 2007!
Concerned? Then tell Congress and the White House!”

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

[Painesright]

As several others have calculated... 1 Trillion (just ONE) is $1 per second for approximately 32,000 years.

American consumers owe almost 14 Trillion in residential 1 - 4 family home-mortgage debt and other consumer related debt (cars, boats, RVs, student loans, credit cards, etc)... that’s up from only 3.4 Trillion in 1990.

At $1 per second, it would take roughly 448,000 years to pay off 14 Trillion in debt... and that’s without interest.

With interest, it would take millions and millions of years to pay it all off at $1 per seccond!

That doesn’t even begin to include all of our multi-family mortgage debt, commercial real estate debt, corporate debt, municipal debt and national debt!!

Crazy, huh?

[rdb3]

Yep. In scientific notation you would simply add the exponents:

10^6 x 10^6 = 10^12

Yep. 10⁶ x 10⁶ = 10¹²

[ETL]

That’s cheating! I don’t have one of those programs!
:)

[ETL]

...or did you just use the html code for exponents. I don’t know it.

[Kozak]

To spend one trillion dollars, you would need to spend a million a day from the founding of the Roman Republic, to now.

[cynwoody]

Here's a calculation for you. Year before last, it was disclosed that the Clintons had made $109m since leaving the White House (mostly speaking fees, consutlting fees, and book royalties). How much would that weigh?

Well, $109m is 10,900 standard bank bundles (100 $100 bills). A $100 bill weighs slightly less than a gram. So, throw in the bundle wrapper and say each bundle is 100 grams (paper wrapper, not the foil Congressman Jefferson used). That means the Clintons' fortune weighs 1,090,000 grams, or about 2,403 pounds. A long ton of money!

Now, a trillion is 9,174.3 Clinton fortunes, or about 22,045,872 pounds or 11.023 megatons of money. Multiply by 100 if you substitute Washingtons for Franklins.

[cynwoody]

...or did you just use the html code for exponents. I don’t know it.

Yep. 10<sup>6</sup> x 10<sup>6</sup> = 10<sup>12</sup>

[Reeses]

If you opened up a new business on the day that Christ was born...

On the flip side, if you invested $1 in the year 1 and made a 2% average return after taxes and inflation, you would have $185,842 trillion dollars today and own everything and everyone on Earth. People today can easily make 2% per year. It boggles the mind how much wealth there could be 2,000 years from now.

[rdb3]

...or did you just use the html code for exponents. I don’t know it.

HTML code. cynwoody got it!

[glennaro]

I try to keep it simple. Most people have an idea of what a million is and that it’s big. I explain that a trillion is one million millions. That usually elicits the reaction I seek.

[ETL]

Thanks. I think I can remember that.

[darkside321]

To fund the 36 trillion unfunded liability of Medicare, everyone and every company would have to fork over their income for 3 years.

---

Soory but if the US would have a debt about 36 trillions
“you” would allready belong to “cuba” at least the US as you have known it would be over since years. 36 Trillions would make the US a 3rd world country unable to pay for its own food.

[BreezyDog]

That’s funny. You win a slice of Pi...:-)

[hal ogen]

I think the easiest way to envision 1 Trillion is: nobama has saved or created 1 trillion jobs.

[fruser1]

“Unfunded Liability” is not debt.

Check this link.

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba662

[fruser1]

No, I was talking about GDP not debt, but debt works.

My only point was to to be able to describe,subjectively, what “a trillion dollars” is.

A trillion dollars is hard to visualize, but “a month’s work” is not.

Someone else posted that the GDP is actually about 14T.

So, to stick w/even numbers, if the debt is 12T, then it’d take a year of work to pay it off. That is, the work (income) of everybody and company in the US.

A single trillion, then, would be a month.

Hope that makes more sense.

[Vision]

A million seconds is 11.5 days

A billion seconds is 31 years.

A trillion seconds is 31,000 years.

[ETL]

Someone else posted that the GDP is actually about 14T.

I know it's a besides-the-point thing, but I posted that and it was 14 BILLION, not trillion for GDP.

The national debt is currently about 12.5 TRILLION dollars, but will soar much higher if the Obamunists get their way on health care and their other aggressive spending plans.

March 11, 2010:
"The United States is approaching $13 trillion in debt, and President Barack Obama’s budget almost doubles that in the next 10 years"

http://houstonconews.com/articles/2010/03/11/news/08candidate.txt
________________________________________________

“Current-dollar GDP — the market value of the nation’s output of goods and services — increased 6.3 percent, or $219.6 billion, in the fourth quarter to a level of $14,461.7 billion. In the third quarter, current-dollar GDP increased 2.6 percent, or $90.9 billion.”

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2010/pdf/gdp4q09_2nd.pdf