How much is One Trillion Dollars?

It’s hard to grasp how much one trillion dollars is. Here are some ways to think about it.

1. If you spend one million dollars a day it would take over 2,739 years to spend one trillion dollars.
2. You could buy over twenty-eight and one-half million new cars at $35,000 each.
3. You could buy over two million eight hundred thousand new homes costing $350,000 each.
4. At a three percent interest rate, you would get over eighty-two million dollars a day.
5. Assuming that every American cost $100 per week to feed, you could feed the entire population for 33 weeks (probably longer if you initially invested the one trillion at the above three percent interest.
6. One trillion dollars could create one million millionaires.

I think you get the idea. One trillion dollars is a lot of money. This amount is approximately the amount that our politicians initially want to spend on health care reform in order (they say) to provide insurance for twenty-five to thirty million uninsured Americans. Let’s use the thirty million number for our calculations. That’s $33,333 dollars for each uninsured person. Doesn’t this seem a bit ridiculous? I don’t like to take sides but after seeing the Congressional Budget Office assessment for the “Pelosi” bill and the Republican alternative bill and comparing the approach, I have to believe that the alternative bill will cost you and I a lot less, keep the Government out of the insurance and health care business, and actually reduce health care costs.

There are many examples of how well the Government handles health care. Medicare – no negotiation for prescription drugs (some deal with the drug companies). Look what Walmart has done with bulk purchasing and negotiation with drug companies. The same situation exists with Medicaid, which also impacts every State (and by the way, requires State Government staff to oversee). Even the Stimulus Plan expects fraud, waste, and abuse to amount to over ten percent of the cost.

If your checkbook says zero, you stop writing checks, but not the Government! They just print more dollars. By doing so, they decrease the value of the dollar for purchasing imports and cause prices to go up. I don’t know how they are hiding it but I certainly have noticed prices creeping up.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to list those Congressmen/women who have been in Washington too long and should go home. These politicians have been in Washington so long that they no longer feel the need to listen to the voters – they have gotten comfortable taking lobbyists gifts and contributions and have forgotten that lobbyists do not have a vote! They have also gotten used to spending money that does not belong to them and doing it irresponsibly.

Keep the pressure on!