Similarly, a $100,000 debt acquired to stockpile bazookas for war against the neighbors is also probably not a sound investment. If the household has a debt of $100,000 from playing the horses, they are probably in trouble. Imagine a household with an annual income of $100,000 a household is not a country, but the analogy is helpful. Is that amount of debt a lot? It partly depends on its origins. Thus, if everyone in America spent his or her entire year working off the national debt, and on nothing else (including taxes or eating), the debt could be cleared in a year. Indeed, it is roughly the average per-capita annual income (the U.S. national debt is roughly $50,000 ($14.3 trillion divided among 300 million people). What is a better alternative? Give huge numbers meaning by converting them into human-sized quantities: for example, into per-capita amounts. Alas, at the end of the article, I am still ignorant about the size of the debt. This time I restrained myself from checking the calculation, because I have even less idea about monetary areas than I have about monetary distances. The national debt, laid out in one-dollar bills, would cover the whole state of Illinois. Offering another comparison, the article has us imagine laying bills flat on the ground. Thus, I have no clue whether a national debt should be twice an earth-moon roundtrip, should be much closer, or should be much farther. Neither does the IMF, which tabulates national debt as a percentage of GDP (a dimensional confusion, but that is another story). For I rarely (actually never) use the distance to the moon as a yardstick for national debts. Thus, my second and healthier reaction is frustration. Even if it turns out correct, the moon comparison is as meaningless as the raw distance in miles. However, I was a lemming because there was no point in checking the calculation. Thus, the stack is about two earth-moon roundtrips-as claimed. The moon is 250,000 miles away, making a roundtrip to the moon 500,000 miles. My quick check went as follows: if one trillion bills reach up to 67,000 miles, then 14.3 trillion bills reach up to 14.3*67,000 miles, or about one million miles. My first reaction to such numbers is, perhaps like a lemming, to check whether they look reasonable. …here’s an astronomical analogy about today’s debt: If you stack up 14.3 trillion dollar bills, the pile would stretch to the moon and back twice. Here is one example from a recent NPR article entitled “Any Way You Stack It, $14.3 Trillion Is A Mind-Bender”:
Recognizing this problem, many articles explaining the national debt attempt to give the distance meaning. The connection to a height has merely replaced one meaningless idea ($1 trillion) with another meaningless idea (a stack 67,000 miles high). Perhaps a large national debt would reach all the way to Mars. But is it large as a national debt? I have no idea. I know it’s way too far to walk and even too far to fly (jumbo jets have a maximum range of around 7,000 miles). For I have little idea of how far 67,000 miles is. No matter which denomination you use, I give the explanation an A for effort, but an F for performance. This comparison is often quoted as a stack of one-dollar bills 67,000 miles high (perhaps because thousand-dollar bills don’t exist). A trillion dollars would be a stack of thousand-dollar bills 67 miles high. And the best I could come up with is that if you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you’d be a millionaire. Speaking to Congress in February 1981, Reagan said:Ī few weeks ago I called such a figure, a trillion dollars, incomprehensible, and I’ve been trying ever since to think of a way to illustrate how big a trillion really is. Thus, speechwriters for Ronald Reagan created, or at least popularized, a widely used attempt to give it meaning.
Even back in 1981, when the national debt was only about $1 trillion, the debt was still incomprehensible. Everyone realizes that this number is incomprehensible. national debt is in the headlines, the media is awash in astronomical numbers such as $14.3 trillion (the current debt).
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