There’s a lot of talk about trillions in spending and debt, but it’s a number we can’t really comprehend. Putting a trillion into numbers that we understand is an excellent way to put it into context. So, we’re going to be comparing a trillion to time. A trillion seconds in years is mind-boggling, and you can find out what it is in my video below! I’ve also included a transcript if you’re unable to watch the video at the moment.
Transcript:
Hi! I want to talk a little bit about what it means for something to be a trillion. Now, trillion is a word that we hear a lot lately. Spending bills, that's one and a half trillion, two and a half trillion, three and a half trillion. The US debt is pushing 29 trillion. And what does that mean?
What does that mean, for something to be a trillion? So, I'm going to share this because some friends were saying that this is useful information that people might like.
So, let's think about it this way. Think about how long a second is, right? So, a second: there just happened. Now, a thousand seconds; it's about 16 and a half minutes.
Now, when we go to a thousand to a million, to a billion, to a trillion, we just multiply it by a thousand. So, a million seconds, it's about 11 and a half days. You can think about that, about the length of a vacation. Now, a billion seconds is about 31, 31 and a half years. And if you're keeping track, a trillion seconds is 31,000 years.
So, when we're thinking about these numbers, I think it's worthwhile to pay attention to this. And when people are feeling concerned about how much spending is being done, understanding what a means for something to be 1 trillion or 2 trillion is really helpful.
I'm not going to get too much into whether this is a good idea or not; the economics here can be a little tricky. But I do notice that a lot of the people that say, "We don't need to worry about this much debt," they often add the caveat' for now'. Right now, we don't really need to worry about it. And part of the reason for that is because as long as things were being invested into growth, then it can be helpful, and US has good credit and other things like that.
But here's the piece that is worth paying attention to. Right now, our debt is growing faster than our Gross Domestic Product in the United States. And so, we can't have more debt than growth forever. At some point, we're going to have to figure out how to reduce the deficit.
Now, the deficit is basically our annual budget over budget, under budget kind of thing. So, our deficit has only actually been balanced in the sense that we have a positive budget where we're making more than we're spending, that only happened between '99 and 2001. Late nineties, you can find the information; there's a lot of great links here about all of that.
But, most of the time, we're spending way more than we need to. And so this whole idea of Keynesian economics, this idea that we should spend more when we need it, is the idea of charging up the economy. But what that also means is that when we are flush and when we're doing well, and the economy is not in some sort of crisis, those are the points where we need to start spending less.
We need to reduce the deficit in times when things are going well. There are four ways to do that. We can spend less, we can raise taxes, we can grow the economy, and that's part of the idea of why the spending on infrastructure is a good idea, or we can shift the things we're spending on. Military costs more, and doesn't create a lot of jobs compared to teachers and education and so forth. By putting money in our budget, into things that create more jobs and grow the economy, that's another way we can do it. The thing is, it's not super popular to do this kind of stuff.
Politicians love to spend more for their people or reduce taxes for their people. So, the question that really we need to think about is: how can we prioritize being responsible over being popular? One way to do that is to shift what it means for someone to be popular. What would it mean for us to really raise up responsible or thoughtful communication? Or what would it look like for us to really collaborate, to think about how do we want to deal with this situation? Or what commitments can we make in the future?
I think in general, one of the most important things we can do is face hard truths and really look at them because it's a lot easier to ignore when things are hard or complex or something like that. So, thank you for listening to this little video, and I hope it was useful.
Again, those numbers for going from a thousand to a million, to a billion, to a trillion seconds. That's 16 minutes, 11/12 days, 31 years for a billion seconds and 31,000 years for a trillion seconds. Thank you for watching, and have a great day.
About Me
I am Duncan Autrey, a conflict transformation facilitator and educator.
For more information on my work, conflict transformation, my new podcast and discussions about thought-provoking topics:
Visit my website: https://www.omni-win.com
Subscribe to Omni-Win Visions here on Substack:
This video is inspired by my conversation with Bill Shireman on my podcast Fractal Friends: https://www.fractalfriends.us/fractalfriends/bill-shireman
You can find my recent Substack post about Bill Shireman here:
Resources:
Overall summary of U.S. national debt:
https://www.itsuptous.org/US-National-Debt
Debt data:
https://howmuch.net/articles/timeline-us-debt-history
https://www.usdebtclock.org/
Deficit data:
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/new-budget-projections-show-record-deficits-and-debt
https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/deficit/trends/
Don't worry about the debt:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/21/national-debt-krugman-reich-booth-duflo-oneill-spriggs-moyo-el-erian.html
https://news.yahoo.com/no-reason-worry-national-debt-094001390.html
Worry about the debt:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddavenport/2018/02/28/five-reasons-why-you-should-worry-about-the-federal-debt/?sh=265399aa4932
https://www.crfb.org/papers/why-should-we-worry-about-national-debt
How to pay off the debt & Keynesian economics:
https://www.shortform.com/blog/keynesian-economic-theory/
How big is a trillion? https://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-develop-a-sense-of-scale/