I came across this debt ticker over at Marvelous Medley:
Just look at that number… $11 Trillion dollars and growing fast! A trillion is a large number, and a bit hard to wrap my head around, so I looked around for some comparisons. I came across this over at tysknews:
Trillion = 1,000,000,000,000.
The country has not existed for a trillion seconds.
Western civilization has not been around a trillion seconds.
One trillion seconds ago – 31,688 years – Neanderthals stalked the plains of Europe.
NPR gave this for comparison:
$1 Trillion would be enough money to buy about a 1,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies for every person in the United States.
And here is a youtube video to give a bit more explaination:
It is hard to wrap one’s head around this number. Take the above, multiply it by 11. Now you have our current debt. Next year, we’ll be adding around $2 Trillion to that number. And we will continue to add Trillions to the debt every year until we get this out of control spending in check.
The United States GDP was just over $14 Trillion in 2008. Yes, our debt is nearly as much as our entire GDP! The interest payments on this debt is the third largest item on our budget at over $412 Billion. Now, throw in that the Federal Government alone is slated to spend over 27% of our GDP this year. Certainly someone other than me has to see the obsurdity in this.
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Posted under Economy
Written by admin on March 24, 2009
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