Most of us are hearing about the government spending a Trillion Dollars, but to the average American it’s just a word.
Some of you may have seen these graphics floating around the internet lately, but if you haven’t you need to take a visual look at a Trillion dollars.
First off a Trillion is a 1 with 12 zeros, it looks like this: $1,000,000,000,000. Okay, so it’s a big number, but let’s put it into perspective.
Before we get to what a trillion dollars looks like visually, here are a couple of interesting statistics:
1. If the printing presses ran from 8-5 every working day, 5 days a week, it would take 72 years to print 1 trillion dollar bills.
2. Stacked on top of one another a trillion dollar bills would be 70,000 MILES high.
3. If you could have spent 1 million dollars per day since the birth of Christ (2009 years ago) you would still need another 740 years to spend a Trillion dollars.
4. One million seconds ago was 10 or 11 days ago
One billion seconds ago was during the Nixon administration
One trillion seconds ago was 30,000 years BC…..wow!
5. To count out One Trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) dollars nonstop without sleeping or eating it would take Thirty-Nine Thousand (39,000) years.
6. If your annual salary or wage is $50,000 it would take you 20 million years to earn a trillion dollars.
7. We could wrap the earth about 4700 times with a trillion one-dollar bills laid end to end around the globe.
8. Assuming there was a roll of 1 trillion – $1 dollar bills, it would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.
So there’s a little “Trillion Dollar Trivia” for you!
Okay, now let’s look at a Trillion dollars visually.
Here we have a man standing next to 1,000,000 (1 million bucks!) You could put a million in your backpack and have lots of fun!
Notice how small it is compared to an average man.
Next we have $100 million dollars. This can be neatly stacked on a pallet about 4 feet high.
Now we have $1 Billion dollars. This is 10 pallets of $100 million each. This used to be a lot of money…..but to congress a billion dollars falls out of Uncle Sam’s pockets like change.
Although a billion would be a lot of fun to spend……how does it look compared to 1 trillion?
HERE IS 1 TRILLION DOLLARS!
Look at this……what we have here is 10,000 pallets (double stacked so they are about 8 feet high) and each pallet has 100 million dollars on it.
Can you see the little man now in the bottom left corner?
So maybe now we can get a glimpse of the burden government is putting on us in terms of long term debt for this “stimulus” package. Anyone want to run a credit check on the borrower? Oh I forgot, most of the borrowers aren’t even born yet!
Brad Chaffee April 21, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Man this is a very good illustration!! thanks for posting it!
Greg Noyes April 21, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Okay, I have to say that a couple of these things are incorrect
first, on #4, if you spent $20 billion every day, you would spend $1 trillion in 50 DAYS, not 50 years, because in 5 days you would spend $100 billion, which is 1/10 of $1 trillion, so $1 trillion would be 10 times that amount, which would be 50 days
Also, in that illustration, 1 million dollar bills is much more than that. That illustration looks more like $100 to be honest with you
admin April 21, 2009 at 1:58 pm
You are correct, #4 was incorrect, so it has been removed. However, that truly is 1 million.
Justin April 21, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I’ve seen $1 million on display in Vegas; and in $100 bills, it looks like what is in the picture.
But rather than sharp-shoot over what denomination the bills are in the illustration, I prefer to marvel at the fiscal irresponsibility demonstrated by the last two administrations and recent Congresses. I wonder when the American people will wake up and put a stop to this. I pray soon.
Jerita April 21, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Wow!! Completely dumbfounded by this illustration.
When will we all become responsible enough with our finances(government included)?
Sheila Stringer April 21, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Good Grief! Unimaginable! Thanks for sharing!
jetpilot510 April 21, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Wow.. I have been to 51,000 feet and boy the fact that this money would exceed that height is scary… sad to know that my kids generation will inherit this problem ….. glad to know that my kids will be brought up in a debt free home with debt free principals.
kdhander April 29, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Now multiply that last graphic by 11 for today or 17 by 2014 (only 5 years away). It IS time for us to wake up and say enough. I don’t care what the party.
Jenn K. April 29, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Scary!! Thanks for the visual picture, it brings it home all the more to me. Our kids will never be able to pay this off.. and obviously we can’t either. What a nightmare.
Eric April 29, 2009 at 6:59 pm
simply put this illustration
painful
Dawn May 7, 2009 at 7:16 am
This is a great illustration, its too bad our Great grand-children and even further down the line than that will be stuck paying back what our generation’s government has sooo thoughtlessly spent. We as citizens need to put our foot down and say “No More” this careless spending needs to stop.
hippy May 7, 2009 at 9:30 am
wow this spending is a joke. why not use monopoly cash it equals the same as our money. we hafto stop this. no more stupid spending at our great, great grand kids expense.
Chris May 7, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Well, it goes to show you that nobody sees their money. If money just circulates, then the money is in the wrong hands and causing this economic crisis. We must pray the Word of God which says that money of the wicked will be reserved for the righteous. In other words, the righteous cause of Christ is a better investment of the world’s money. Pray on.
Chris
GRAM July 23, 2009 at 1:43 pm
There is something to be said for being over 70.