Normally I like to leave posts about Politics and Economic woe, for allupinyour.biz, but I saw this graphic today on Animal New York, and it got me thinking.
The amount of money represented in the graphic above, is one billion dollars. One trillion dollars is one thousand times what you see in the picture. That’s a lot of cash. Ok, now that you have the mental image of one trillion dollars, try to put it into a practical example. I hate Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh as much as the next guy, but Rove has published a couple of articles recently that have really gotten under my skin (not because of the author). The reason they bothered me, is because the content of the articles, points to all of the discrepancies of the campaigning Obama, vs. Commander in Chief Obama. Today, a different Carl, sent me the link to an WSJ Op. Ed. piece authored by Rove. A lot of it was repeat content of an article published earlier this week, also authored by Rove, dealing with bait and switch. But the part of today’s article that blew my mind, was the following:
Not even Team Obama can forestall unpleasant reality. And among those America now faces is Mr. Obama adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt in his first 20 months and 11 days in office, eclipsing the $2.9 trillion added during the Bush presidency’s entire eight years.
Whoa! $2.9T is a lot any way you slice it. But to Bush’s credit, it was spread over 8 years, including all of the 911 and war crap. The Obama administration is a runaway train and the boiler fire is being stoked by pallets full of money. 20 months?!!! $3.2 trillion?!! Ok, so now take the money in the picture, multiply it by 1 thousand, then multiply that by 3.2. It may just be my limited imagination, but I’m having a hard time even picturing the image of 1 thousand times what is in the graphic. Was this really the kind of change that we were looking for?
Comments
5 responses to “Visualize Debt”
Wait. I thought a trillion was a thousand billions? Not to be that guy, but a thousand of those graphics seems so much more affordable. Times 3.2.
@Collin: Collin, you are absolutely right. I was going by the “Long Scale.” From Wikipedia: Long scale is the English translation of the French term échelle longue. It refers to a system of numeric names in which every new term greater than million is 1,000,000 times the previous term: “billion” (from bi and million) means “a million to the power of two” or “a million millions” (1012), “trillion” (from tri and million) means “a million to the power of three” or “a million billions” (1018), and so on. Whoops. You are right, hahahaha. 1000 times seems way better.
Yes. Of course. The long scale. In that case, I stand corrected. From here on out, I will always assume we are using the long scale. I’ll never understand why today’s youth aren’t taught how to properly count past a million.
Hahahaha. Yet another thing ruined by the those blasted American Yankees, and their new-fangled “colonies.”
Maybe you could convert that into Canadian dollars for me? LOL But I agree, I don’t feel too stimulated by all this economy stimulus, if you know what I mean.