Comprehending an Incomprehensible Economy
Even our most educated elites can't truly grasp the concept of trillions of dollars in debt. No wonder we've lost all faith in them.
The late great astronomer Carl Sagan was once famously lampooned by Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show for saying “billions and billions” on the hit PBS show Cosmos in a unique voice when describing astronomical distances.
Well, we are beyond astronomy now, beyond billions and billions and into the unreal realm of trillions.
The Federal Reserve recently announced that it was injecting another $1 trillion into the financial system. China owns U.S. Treasuries to the tune of 1.4 trillion rapidly weakening dollars. On April 2, Congress approved President Barack Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget. New estimates from Congressional Budget Office project U.S. federal budget deficits of $9.3 trillion over the next decade if (shock) Obama gives away his trillions in new spending.
These are sums of unimaginable magnitude. And yet they are thrown about as if everyone has the slightest conception of what they mean.
A trillion is a thousand billions. It is a million millions. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to put this number in perspective, pointing out that you could spend a million dollars a day from the birth of Jesus until today and still not have spent a trillion dollars.
Or to put it another way: A stack of thousand dollar bills totaling $1 trillion would soar 68 miles into the sky. If the C.B.O. is correct in its projection of Obama deficits, it means we’ll be shoveling the equivalent of a 611 mile-high stack of thousand dollar bills out the door (a sum, it is considered impolite to mention, we do not have).
Much ink has been spilled of late about how the governing elite have failed our country in bringing on this great crisis. Patrick J. Bucahan, for one, in a recent column indicted “this generation of political and financial elites,” which has “proven itself unfit to govern a great nation.” No doubt there is plenty of blame to go around – honest mistakes and outright graft and imbecility from the best and brightest of Washington and Wall Street.
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Matt Patterson is a National Review Institute Washington fellow and the author of "Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story". His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.
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20 Comments
1. Parabellum:Oh, don’t worry, be happy. 0bama has just asked his cabinet to cut a whopping $100 Million from their budgets.
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE53J2M220090420
Whoopee!
Apr 20, 2009 - 6:19 am 2. David Thomson:The “elites” could care less about the profound meaning of trillions of dollars. They merely want to grab power. As Rhom Emmanuel infamously stated: “A crisis should never be wasted.” These individuals perceives themselves as benevolent and well educated. The hoi polloi are supposed to remain silent and let them run things. Thankfully, we may now have enough irate citizens to stop this disgusting power grab.
Apr 20, 2009 - 7:58 am 3. Tom Perkins:“a massive anti-intellectual uprising,”
What makes you think it’s an anti-intellectual upsrising? I’m unaware of most of the “elites” making these decisions having any pretensions to being intellectuals–other than adherence to discredited ones like Keynes.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp
Apr 20, 2009 - 8:46 am 4. David S:Now I understand the Tea Party movement. It is simply the advocacy movement for a return to the Dark Ages. Thanks for making that crystal clear!
Peace.
DS
Apr 20, 2009 - 9:24 am 5. Falconsword:Ah David S, always one of the first to weigh in, and the last to think. So now anyone who doesn’t want the nation bankrupted, our children burdened with an unpayable debt, and generations of gaping mawed mooches drinking our blood is ‘returning to the dark ages’. So tell me, what is so ‘advanced’ about Obama’s utopian dream? Sounds more and more like Welcome Back Carter every day…
If we ever wake up in this country and reform our tax system to a universal percentage, a FAIR tax of some sort, something with less than a THOUSAND pages, something so simple even the Treasury Secretary can understand it, then we will have left behind the Dark Ages and trule entered an age of enlightment. Maybe then people will even want to live in those utopian hell holes of California, Michigan, etc, once again?
Apr 20, 2009 - 9:39 am 6. Duane Phinney:“Now I understand the Tea Party movement.”
No, you do not. But you will…
Apr 20, 2009 - 9:50 am 7. cannedjam:for a better understanding of just how fast we spend money you can check out the obama-spend-o-rama meter i cooked up. It is an acurate readout of how much money the the US government spends per second under Obama’s 2010 budget.
I doubt the average person’s mind can keep up with the spending – i bet if we had to cut a check for our income taxes at the end of every week instead of them being automatically deducted from our paychecks, the American people would be in revolt – but out of sight out of mind.
I cannot see how we an keep this spending up. insane
Apr 20, 2009 - 10:24 am 8. Themistocles:Let’s say you promise to give your wife $1 billion, which she has to spend at the rate of $1 million every day until it’s gone.
It will take her about two years and nine months to spend the entire $1 billion.
But if you promise to give her $1 trillion, which she must spend at the rate of $1 million every day, it will take her about 2,730 years to spend it.
0bama + Geithner = we’re doomed.
Apr 20, 2009 - 11:59 am 9. Howard Roark:It may be a little difficult to get your mind around the concept of trillions of dollars. it’s not at all difficult to grasp that you, your children, and your grandchildren are expected to pay off a debt that they never signed on for and weren’t even asked about. A kiss was once customary, and they didn’t even get a handi-wipe.
Apr 20, 2009 - 12:43 pm 10. therealist:Between 1973 and 1981 (who was President then?) inflation wiped out more than half of the value of the dollar. SO I have good news for you – that $1T debt will only feel like $500B when Obama’s done with it.
Apr 20, 2009 - 2:15 pm 11. carol:What would happen if we cut the Government out of Our budgets? The US Government just became too expensive for the taxpayer. it is OUR money and Why, if we don’t like what is going on, must we pay?
Can we just not pay ANY taxes and keep our money?
Apr 20, 2009 - 7:38 pm 12. cannedjam:IF we ALL did that, wouldn’t it send a message?
They cant throw Everyone in jail. Can they?
the craziest part is that every time people on the right bring this point up – those on the left just say- well hey george bush started this. Like as if we are supposed to say “oh yeah you know what you are right, it makes perfect sense now, george bush started some really high spending, so it is logical to support obama’s out of the realm of reason spending”. The argument makes no sense at all. Its the equivalent of your wife going on a spending spree at the mall, and then you depleting your life savings, children’s college fund,cashing in your life insurance and your 401k, then maxing out all of your credit cards, taking a second mortgage out on your home, and taking a trip to vegas. “well honey, remember those $200 jeans you bought at the mall? So really you started this spending, it would be hypocritical of you to be mad at me”
Apr 20, 2009 - 9:04 pm 13. JED:Obama says that “we have lost our moral bearings.” Apparently in some leap of faith and trillions of tax payer dollars we can be righted from 300 years of history.
Apr 21, 2009 - 11:59 am 14. myth buster:“Obama says” could turn into a book of sayings.
Not only that, but the liberals argument presumes we actually supported Bush’s spending, which we did not. We are anti-bailout, period.
Apr 21, 2009 - 2:04 pm 15. JED:Obama says that the U.S. economy is like a house built on sand. That house has a GDP of 15 trillion a year. It’s real estate value has been estimated at 160 trillion with a net value of 250 trillion. That is some sand castle. I am guessing that somebody worked to build that since 1492.
Apr 22, 2009 - 7:29 am 16. Haggar:Cannedjam is so right. All I have heard, is “well Bush spent….”
I didn’t agree with Bush then either.
I guess the HOPE and CHANGE is:
Apr 22, 2009 - 8:13 am 17. Haggar:Take Bush’s poor spending habits and CHANGE it to incomprehensibly bad spending habits and HOPE that it somehow works out or morphs into communism/socialism and the history can be ignored or re-written to make appear correct! Frank is starting it now anyway, and hasn’t erased the history from his website yet. lololz
Sorry, I have totally forgotten my manners lately.
Matt, nice work!!
Apr 22, 2009 - 8:15 am 18. Hotpatch 6:Please, never get carried away with “the Best and the Brightest” (even though they are always carried away with themselves). Was it not an elite bunch of Harvard and Princeton “Best and Brightest” professors and lawyers that got us into Vietnam? And ultimately cost us 58,000 lives? Of course their excuse was “Well, it wasn’t really our fault because President Nixon should have gotten us out faster”. (Even though it wasn’t President Nixon that got us into Vietnam in the first place). Which is a trait common to “the Best and the Brightest” – any mistake is always someone else’s fault. They are, after all, blameless because they are sincere and really mean well. As for our economic crisis, just remember – the same kind of “Best and Brightest” people that got us stuck in Vietnam have gotten us stuck in the current economic mess. We truly deserve the leaders we elect.
Apr 22, 2009 - 12:53 pm 19. Sebaneau:Why write an article if you don’t really have anything to say?
Apr 25, 2009 - 4:30 pm 20. pat:A trillion dollars is real easy to understand. You don’t have to talk about dollar bills stacked to the moon. All you have to do is to convert it to a per head or per household amount. The US population is 300 million people living in 100 million households. A trillion dollars is $3,333 per head, or $10,000 per household.
I’m waiting for someone to ask President Obama to tell us what his projected deficits are per head. I somehow think he won’t know the answer (anything near $30,000 per head would be close enough)
Jun 1, 2009 - 9:38 am