Very interesting thought…….what does it mean??

The Meaning of a Trillion Dollars,

After all, how much is a trillion?

It’s the number one followed by 12 zeros. But that doesn’t shed much light on just how deeply in debt the federal government is that it must pass a law enabling it to borrow up to $8.965 trillion.

“It’s hard to understand what a trillion is. I don’t know what it is,” confessed Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, this week when debating the government’s staggering fiscal obligations.

It doesn’t help that the standard hand-held calculator comes nowhere close to computing numbers in the trillions. About the best it can do is 99,999,999.

John Nolan, a mathematics professor at American University in Washington, said that a trillion is “not a big number at all” for some theoretical problems. “But in terms of practical numbers it’s just overwhelming.”

So he conjured up a spending spree, something Americans might be able to relate to. “If you spent a million dollars a day for a million days (2,739 years),” you’d hit $1 trillion, Nolan observed.

To spend $1 trillion in the average American life span of 77 years, you’d have to be on a lifetime spending spree of about $35,580,857 and change every day from birth.

Don Albers, associate executive director of the Mathematical Association of America, said to forget about all the fancy numbers. “I don’t think the problem so much is understanding that number as just understanding whether they’ve got more money coming in than is going out,” he said.

And that’s the rub. The federal government has been on a spending binge. Just since 2002, the Republican-controlled Congress has had to hike the Treasury Department’s credit card limit four times, for a total of more than $3 trillion.

Congress can take some comfort in knowing that at this rate, it will take a very long time to exhaust the trillions and spill into the quadrillions. “Let’s hope that they won’t be using that” number ever, Albers said.

Our government is about 9 of these in debt, and wanting more. Again, “Very interesting thought…….what does it mean??

Fox News Network

Where did that article come from?

John

Looks pretty linear to me,..except for the depression era. The problem is nothing is being done differently.

“Just since 2002, the Republican-controlled Congress has had to hike the Treasury Department’s credit card limit four times, for a total of more than $3 trillion.”

Matt, Matt, Matt… Your data HAS to be wrong! In looking at your data, there are years listed there that democrats were in charge of both the senate and congress! If you were to believe the article, the growth of the federal deficit is ONLY because of republicans!
Matt, get your facts right!

Hey hey hey! I never said anything about repubs or demos. Put you’re right even if I don’t like it check these out.

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Heres the kicker,….decide for yourself

$9 Trillion.

If we ignore corporation taxes, that is $30,000 per individual. Or, $9,000,000,000,000 divided by 300,000,000 Americans.

That is big, but not as big as the $9 trillion number. Things that can quickly wipe out the debt:

Growth-with $9 trillion being a small percent of GNP, IF the debt can remain constant, the $9 trillion will get smaller and smaller on a relative basis. Think of more employees making more money paying more in taxes-these compound eachother.

Inflation-inflation have been rather low, but any pickup in inflation will rapidly shrink the real dollars that $9 trillion is. For a ton of other issues, this is not a good “fix”.

The economy is doing great right now. We are a long way away from needing to panic.

Sounds like more democratic B/S to me. I can say Im a republican and proud to be one. but I will tell you I take ALL politician rhetoric with a grain of salt. dont matter if its democratic or republican they ALL have a way of slanting the info to make it sound better or worse depending what side of the middle you are on.and this is just another case

Click around on this site. Lots of good info that puts some perspective on the debt and budget.

http://www.kowaldesign.com/budget/

-J.

The bottom line is the rich get richer and the poor suffer. As long as we, (citizens of the great USA) allow our government leaders to make changes to better themselves, and the corporations they support. The average Joe like myself will always have to be one step behind. Just my opinion.

Quick question for all the guy’s in the know…………

If we pulled all of our armed forces back to american soil…

If we stopped all forign (sp) aid for one year……..

If we shifted our attention to affordable health care…..

If we outlawed campaign donations of ANY sort and limited campaigning time to 60 days………

If politicians max term in office is only 4 years…..

If congress paid as much attention to imports as they do to being re-elected………

Would our country be 9 trillion in debt?
Would our country be better off?

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Quick question for all the guy’s in the know…………

If we pulled all of our armed forces back to american soil…

If we stopped all forign (sp) aid for one year……..

If we shifted our attention to affordable health care…..

If we outlawed campaign donations of ANY sort and limited campaigning time to 60 days………

If politicians max term in office is only 4 years…..

If congress paid as much attention to imports as they do to being re-elected………

Would our country be 9 trillion in debt?
Would our country be better off?

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I hear what you are saying……..

BUT:

What if the middle east cut us off of oil?
What if China refused to sell goods to us?
What if Japan pulled out all the cars?
What if South America quit selling us cloths? (or worse yet, quit selling us coffee?)

If you complain about the rich getting richer and you don’t want to be getting “poorer”, then my advice to you is work a commission job or go self employed, since money is your motivator!

Pulling all our armed froced back to our soil would be akin to putting your head in the sand and hoping the “bad man” will just go away. As for the numbers….statistics can be manipulated to mean anything you want them too. Politicians have been doing it for YEARS. One simple “ctrl, alt,delete” of the gov’t puter would erase the debt. poof, right back to zero.

FYI, I’ve been self employed for nearly 20 years.

The point has nothing to do with the rich getting richer. Rather how much money would the government save by bringing the troops home, stopping foreign aid ect.

The country as a whole has become so accustom to us helping the world solve it’s problems that we have forgotten our own people.

Now don’t twist this to mean I’m in favor of government welfare……..I didn’t say that. I just think we need to pay closer attention to things at home.

Brian,

Go back up and click on that link I put up. Only 15% of the 2006 budget is for the DOD. The vast majority of spending is on social programs. See this chart.

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Now don’t twist this to mean I’m in favor of government welfare……..I didn’t say that. I just think we need to pay closer attention to things at home.

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If 45% of spending is already on welfare and entitlments, how much more do you feel it should be?

Give me the foreign aid bill and the war budget for 2005.

The only point I’m attempting to make (doing a poor job of it LOL) is we are spending to much money outside of our borders.

Just because money is spent domestically does not automatically make it welfare and entitlements. What about infrastructure improvements, education, police, fire, health care, “war” on drugs, scientific investments to move away from dependence on foreign oil?

I think Tobi had it right talking about the rich getting richer and the Average Joe (anyone worth less than 8 figures) getting stuck with the bill.

There are plenty of multi-millionaire rats in both political parties who could care less about the typical American. I’m sure they love it when we get riled up with some of these liberal vs. conservative debates (gun-control, welfare, abortion, religion, etc). We get distracted by these issues and they are taking in money hand over fist.
CR

I agree whole heartedly with Brian that we spend way too much money outside our boarders. Heck, the countries we give foriegn aid to can’t, or won’t, even pay the interest on what they recieved from us, less lone pay us back.

Why is it that the whole world thinks it is “our” job to keep them afloat? We are a financially broke country, plain and simple, and all because we want to keep giving, and giving, and giving…….

Its time to take care of “us”, as in “US”A and say to hell with the rest of the world.

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Just because money is spent domestically does not automatically make it welfare and entitlements. What about infrastructure improvements, education, police, fire, health care, “war” on drugs, scientific investments to move away from dependence on foreign oil?

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Those item fall under “Other” in the graph.

-J.

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Give me the foreign aid bill and the war budget for 2005.

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Should be the same as 2006 since budgets are bi-annual.

-J.

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We are a financially broke country, plain and simple, and all because we want to keep giving, and giving, and giving…….

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We are the richest county in the world. Far from being anywhere near “broke”.

-J.

My opinion:
Don’t think for a minute that if terrorism will disappear if we pull out of the Middle East. If we stop with the Foriegn aid, we WILL be fighting this battle on our own turf.

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We are a financially broke country, plain and simple, and all because we want to keep giving, and giving, and giving…….

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We are the richest county in the world. Far from being anywhere near “broke”.

-J.

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We have a great appraised value, yes. But our currency is nothing more than promisory notes and our government needs to borrow money to stay in business.

Like any other business, the government should have to run on a budget. Every time they pass a bill funding another cause, they are spending uncollected tax revenues, or stealing from Peter to pay Paul. Have you noticed that most people are not happy when they hear that their taxes are going up again. Heck, we can’t even reallocate 3/16ths of 1% of our established taxes for natural resources in this state without everybody raising he!! about it. If the money isn’t there, DON’T SPEND IT!

It is NOT the responsibility of this country to bail out every country in the world every time some sort of catastrophy happens there. We’ve done it for so long that now these countries DEMAND us to throw money to them every time they have a problem, otherwise they could care less about us. How many countries do you think gave us financial aid when the earth quakes hit San Francisco 12-15 years ago?

Jon, do you still have that article I sent you a year or two ago about the speech Gov. Hamm gave about the book “Mexifornia”?

BUT:

What if the middle east cut us off of oil?
What if China refused to sell goods to us?
What if Japan pulled out all the cars?
What if South America quit selling us cloths? (or worse yet, quit selling us coffee?)

MAYBE WE WOULDN’T HAVE SO MANY PEOPLE BEING LAID OFF IN THIS COUNTRY, MIGHT HAVE TO FEND FOR OURSELVES.

AND THESE COUNTRYS WOULDN’T BE GETTING ALL OF OUR MONEY AND THAT IS WHAT MAKES THE WORLD GO AROUND.

JUST A THOUGHT

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I concur. Isn’t it about time to talk about fishing? I hear the ‘eyes could spawn at any minute on pool four!!!!

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Isn’t it about time to talk about fishing?

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Good point Little B. My rig is coming out of storage on April 8.