Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Grasping A Trillion Dollars

Debbie Morgan | 24.03.2009 17:42 | Analysis | Free Spaces | World

Do we really understand the true scope of $1 trillion? We better, since our government is spending trillions of our taxpayer dollars on bailing out failing businesses!

With the $700 Billion Bush Bailout plan, the $787 Billion Obama Stimulus plan and the new possibly $1 trillion Obama bailout, it is high time people understand just what “a trillion” is. If they truly understood this, I think they would all be as livid as I! (Bear with me, because this does not make for great reading…but it is extremely enlightening!)

We can all agree that we would be sitting really pretty if we had a six-figure income, right? Let’s say we made a consistent $150,000 a year, starting at age 18 until we retired at age 75. I’ll do the math…We would have made $8,550,000 in our life. That is not bad, but lets say we stumbled upon something really crazy and made a consistent $250,000 per year for the same period. We would have made $14,250,000 for our life’s work. Now, keep in mind, that is with absolutely NO raise for the 57 years of work…Now, lets think about this, 100,000 people can work for $150,000, or 70,000 people for $250,000, for the 57 years and that would STILL not be $1 trillion.

The population of the United States is estimates at 305,982,756 at the time of this writing. The population of the world, at the same time, is 6,765,807,365. It would take more than 3,251 US populations, or 147 world populations, to get even close to 1 trillion people. Have you grasped what a trillion is yet?

Ok, lets look at something else. If we divided $1 trillion by the population of the United States, EACH person, that is each man, woman, and child, would receive $3,251. Now, THAT would stimulate the economy! Now let’s averaged by household, there are approximately 117,687,214 households in the US. That means that EACH household would receive more than $8,497. What could you do with that?

Let’s get social, shall we?

As of 2007, there were an estimated 671,859 homeless people in the United States. With $1 trillion, we could give EACH homeless person approximately $1,488,407!

According to I Care About Orphans, there is an estimated 127,000 children awaiting homes in the United States. With $1 trillion, we could give EACH child more than $7,874,000.

In 2006, it was estimated that there were 36,500,000 people in the US living in poverty. With $1 trillion, you could give EACH person living in poverty more than $26,000.

Are you grasping what $1 trillion is yet?

Or, in more abstract terms, a trillion grains of sand would weigh over 73 tons…it would take 62 days for light to travel a trillion miles…1 trillion dollar bills taped end to end it would stretch from Earth to the Sun at its farthest distance from the Sun.

Former Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee had some interesting figures. According to him, with $1 trillion, we could buy 1000 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies for every for every single person in the United States or we could put 8,000,000-plus students through a four-year Private College. Huckabee came up with this, but I did some re-figuring for more current estimates and according to the market values which appeared on Forbes for early Feb, 2009, with $1 trillion, we could actually purchase Microsoft ($168B), Walmart ($188B), Google ($107B), Coca-Cola ($100B), Pepsi Co ($80B), Apple, Inc ($83B), and Time Warner ($35B) and still have $243 Billion left over to purchase even more businesses!

Astounding? Do you get it yet? $1 trillion is $1,000,000,000,000, that is 1,000 billions. Warren Buffett, the richest man in the world according to Forbes, is worth $62 billion. That is not even CLOSE to $1 trillion! So, the next time our Elected Officials tell you they need anywhere near $1 trillion, please remember what $1 trillion is really worth!

 http://www.takebackwashington.com/articles/GraspingATrillionDollars.html

Endnotes:
Census
 http://www.census.gov/

National Alliance to End Homelessness
 http://www.endhomelessness.org/section/data/homelessmap

I Care About Orphans
 http://www.icareaboutorphans.org/?Menu=2

Household Income Rises, Poverty Rate Declines, Number of Uninsured Up
 http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/010583.html

If You had $1 Trillion
 http://www.mikehuckabee.com/index.cfm?fa=News.View&News_id=5868487c-f4ac-411b-a1ca-9f97e886a95a

The World’s Billionaires
 http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/10/billionaires08_Warren-Buffett_C0R3.html

Saw’s Saws
www.sawssaws.com

Graphic illustration of a Trillion:
 http://www.kickthemallout.com/article.php/Story-What_Does_A_Trillion_Look_Like

Debbie Morgan
- e-mail: pressbox@bridgestonemediagroup.com
- Homepage: http://www.takebackwashington.com

Comments

Display the following 2 comments

  1. a bit inaccurate — steff
  2. Every day spending — dp
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech