“Opinions are welcome,” the sign over my computer reads. Well, maybe no sign exists, but the sentiment certainly does. I do welcome all opinions, even if they point to a certain lack of understanding on my part. And so I give you the following opinion, which clearly suggests I lack a familiarity with the actuality or reality of the number one trillion.
Although I enjoy your column, I don’t think you really grasp what a trillion is … and you’re not alone, or there would be rioting in the streets.
For the record, one trillion is the number “1” followed by 12 zeros (1,000,000,000,000), or, 1 trillion = 1,000 billion, or 1 trillion is 1012 power,but this is not the point of the writer now is it? In fact, to his point, I agree that none of us, including the writer, “grasp what a trillion is …” How could we since true understanding is experiential. Conceptually, I understand the number, but experientially I cannot, and no one else can either. Now to the larger point …
It’s official, trillion is the new billion. No longer is government spending talked about in terms of a mere ten digits. With the recent flurry of government spending, we are going to need another three zeros to make sense of it all. One trillion dollars; it’s a number that few people can comprehend, let alone your standard nine digit calculator. There have been attempts to put this number into perspective before. A trillion dollar bills laid end to end would reach the sun or you spend a dollar per second for 32,000 years or one trillion dollars in pennies would weigh as much as 2,755,778 Argentinosauruses (the largest known dinosaur). Fanciful as this may be, the real story behind one trillion dollars is in its economic impact.
And so it is … one trillion is conceptually huge, just as 100 billion was conceptually huge in 1910, and 100 million was conceptually huge in 1810, and 10 million was conceptually huge in 1710, and so on. It is all relative, and to suggest that because we are now dealing with a conceptually huge number somehow it is beyond our capacity to either conceptually understand it, or, more importantly, to deal with it economically. We will deal with economically; we have done it before when economically things in this country were far worse… So let’s look at what the writer is really referring to – our national debt, which is projected to be some 90% of GDP in 2020 ($9.75 TRILLION), ten years away.
In the immediate post WWII era, the U.S. national debt was 117.5, 121.7, and 110.3 percent of GDP in 1945, 1946 and 1947, respectively. In relative terms, if we do hit the 90% debt to GDP ratio in 2020, we will still not reach the worst ratio in history.
My friends our national debt is no joke. It is serious business, and we should all encourage our government to reduce it as prudently and as quickly as possible. But at the same time, it is no reason to expect the worst. Fear is not an active response – it is reactionary. Keep in mind, as I have stated before, the fearful language around our debt is as old as our country. Keep in mind, as well, that in the 1990s, the same fear-filled language floated then, but by the end of that decade, we actually had an annual budget surplus and a projected 5-year national surplus of $5 trillion. Yes, I said 5 trillion because now I think I grasp the number just a bit better.
Trade in the day; invest in your life …
