Some numbers are so large that it is difficult to get one's head around them. For example, the national debt of the United States at present is nearly THIRTY-TWO TRILLION DOLLARS. That's 32 × 1012, 32 with 12 zeroes after it.
There was a time not too long ago when countries didn't agree on what the words billion, trillion, and quadrillion actually meant. In some countries 109 was called a billion but in other countries it was called a thousand million or a milliard. In some countries 1012 was called a trillion but in other countries it was called a billion or a million million; in the latter countries 1018 was called a trillion. This state of affairs could (and often did) lead to misunderstanding in financial matters and topics like national debts.
Are you confused? Eventually agreement was reached on terminology. I remind you of what Republican U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois once said, "A few billion here, a few billion there, pretty soon we're talkng real money."
Just how big is 32 trillion? Instead of money, let's consider time. We all know that there are 60 seconds in a minute. Since there are 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day, each day is made up of 14,400 seconds. A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is about 31.5 years. A trillion seconds is about 31,710 years. Change seconds to dollars, then multiply that last number by 32 and you will begin to understand the enormity of the U.S. national debt.
Here is a mind-boggling equation:
32 × 31,710 = 1,014,720
That's the number of years it would take to eradicate the current U.S. national debt paying it at the rate of one dollar per second. Even at a rate of $1,000 per second, it would still take 1,014.72 years to do it.
Factoid of the day: Henley Global Citizens Report has found that New York City is the wealthiest city in the world in terms of number of millionaires and billionaires. Among its approximately 8,500,000 inhabitants there are 345,600 millionaires and 59 billionaires.
Help, how can we ever pay down this debt! Those millionaires can keep their big city and the others like it. Of course they obviously have armed security since they can afford it.
ReplyDeleteI will tell you about millionaires and billionaires in other cities in my next post. Thank you for commenting, Terra.
DeleteIt boggles my mind that there can be so many people who have billions or millions of dollars.
ReplyDeleteThe debt is incomprehensible
It boggles my mind too. The New York figure of 345,600 millionaires in a population of 8.5 million amounts to (I did the math) 4 percent. Somehow I don't think that rate is true in the general population. I grew up in a small town of about 1,000 people (we had al of two traffic signals) and 4 per cent would have meant 40 millionaires in my town. No way! Thank you for commenting, kylie.
DeleteStephen Hawking said we could all be secure and comfortable if the wealth generated by technology was shared fairly rather than being accumulated by a minority, but, unfortunately, the trend so far is towards the few.
ReplyDeleteAs regards big numbers, your timescales are minuscule in terms of the age of the earth, our galaxy and the universe. The earth has some 4 billion years remaining before it is swallowed up by the expanding sun. Start the countdown in seconds.
I'm sure what Stephen Hawking said is true, but it sounds like socialism/communism to me. Someting always seems to go awry between the concept and the carrying out of the details in real life.
DeleteTrue, a million years is as nothing in the overall scheme of things. But we have to take it in bite-sized chunks to begin to grasp the enormity of it all, n'est-ce pas? Thank you for commenting, Tasker.