Penguins
To the race track.
Have you ever explained a trillion to a six year old? Not easy. Ronald Reagan made an attempt in his '82 State of the Union Address:
"I've been trying ... to think of a way to illustrate how big a trillion is. The best that I could come up with is that if you had a stack of $1000 bills in your hand only four inches high you would be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of $1000-dollar bills 67 miles high."
Four inches would make you a millionaire. During Reagan, the national debt tripled from the $993 billion to $2.6 trillion, or a 174 miles high.
So here is what a trillion-dollars gets you these days (besides 10% of our GDP):
- every woman, man and child in the United States $3278
- twelve times what the federal government spends each year on transportation
- ten times what it spends on education
- Six times what Senator Obama has vowed to spend over 10 years for energy independence.
- It is 19% more than NASA's budget for the entire half century the space agency has been in existence.
- It's 38% more than this year's bloated Pentagon budget.
- It's 60% of what's needed to renew and repair America's entire infrastructure of bridges and roads.
- It's 50% of what's needed to provide universal health coverage for all Americans.
"In my judgment, the risk of this regulatory approach is simply unacceptable for America's investors."
Arthur Levitt, longest serving Chairman of the SEC, in 1999 or the same year as the Gramm-Leach-Blilely Act
"The public adore me. I haven't got a bad word to say about Paul. Men are falling over themselves to ask me out. My only interest in life is helping others."
