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Do you have any idea how much money a trillion dollars is? If you paid $1 per second, it would take you: 12 days to spend $1 million 32 years to spend $1 bil
by 300bps 5y ago
Do you have any idea how much money a trillion dollars is?
If you paid $1 per second, it would take you:
12 days to spend $1 million
32 years to spend $1 billion
32,000 years to spend $1 trillion
Imagine spending $1 every second for 32,000 years. It's ridiculous! Yet we throw that number around like it "isn't that dramatic". We will never be able to pay off that borrowed money! And it will work until it doesn't. And then we will wish we were never so foolish.
- wbsss4412 5y agoUS GDP is over 23 trillion dollars on an annualized basis, what you’re saying lacks any sense of proportion. Even assuming no growth, 3 trillion dollars represents 1.3% of gdp over the same period. If you just want to throw large numbers around, why not just convert everything into cents? Imagine spending 1 cent per second for 3.2 million years! That’s a long time.
- amalcon 5y agoThe population of the United States was around 331 million per the 2020 census, so $1T is a little over $3000 per resident. The GDP of the United States was approximately 21 trillion in 2020 (a pandemic year) per World Bank, so a $1T loan is about 5% of gross annual income. It's not that hard for an individual or business with good credit history to get such a loan. Comparing things on the scale of the national budget of the country with the world's largest economy to things on individual scale is kind of like comparing a person's height to the radius of the moon. It's going to confuse more than it elucidates. Edit: To be clear, my comparison is bad too. Comparison to individuals is just not the type of tool that makes sense for looking at national level things, because by cherry picking the comparison you can convince it to say anything you want.
- 300bps 5y agoso a $1T loan is about 5% of gross annual income No, this is not right at all. The total income of the United States government is $4 trillion per year. So a $1 trillion loan is 25% of gross annual income. The $3 trillion being added to the debt is 75% of gross annual income. GDP is not the income of the United States government. But this new debt will be debt of the United States government. The reality is that we are $29 trillion in debt now and adding to it rapidly. That is 7.25 years of gross income in debt. What would you say to someone that made $100,000 per year and was in debt $725,000?
- amalcon 5y agoGDP is the gross income of the United States. The revenue of the federal government doesn't quite have an individual analogue, because it's somewhat arbitrary (it is effectively a fraction of GDP that can be unilaterally increased or decreased by Congress, though doing so has side effects). If you're trying to make a comparison with an individual, you'd need to come up with such an analogy. Gross income isn't it.
- wbsss4412 5y agoSetting aside your remarks about GDP not being relevant for government financing, The government is not a household, it exists in perpetuity. The time scales with which it can service debt are completely different.