by Dr. Harold Pease
We are presently over 14 trillion dollars in debt, three trillion of which was incurred the last two years under President Barack Obama. So what is a trillion dollars? Let me try to give some perspective. To begin with a trillion is the number 1 followed by twelve zeros. A trillion dollars is a thousand billion and a billion is a thousand million. This still means very little to my students who count their money in fives, tens and twenties.
One mathematician gave us a more practical way to evaluate our outstanding debt. One trillion one-dollar bills stacked atop each other (not end to end but flat) would reach nearly 68,000 miles into space—a third of the way to the moon. If so, the debt incurred under President Obama alone would take us to the moon. Moreover, if you like traveling atop this stack of ones, you could return to earth for yet another three trillion dollars which is six trillion dollars. You could repeat your visit to and from the moon for yet another six trillion, making 12 trillion total. We have two trillion in debt remaining, just enough to get us two-thirds of the way to the moon again (See CNN News Cast, Feb. 4, 2009).
Senator Mitch McConnell gave another illustration just as awe striking. He calculated that if we spent a million dollars every day since Jesus was born we still would not have spent a trillion dollars—only three-fourths of a trillion dollars. We would have 13 1/4 trillion left.
Someone else equated our national debt to seconds and concluded that a million seconds is about 11 ½ days and a billion seconds is about 32 years. A trillion seconds is about 32,000 years thus 14 trillion seconds is 448,000 years (See CNN News Cast, Feb. 4, 2009). This is not helpful and only makes my head spin. My Ph. D is not in math.
I ask my students, “Who gets to go without so that this debt can be paid?” Go without?” That is a concept foreign to this generation!! They do not know and neither do their parents and grandparents who laid it on their backs. When they are told that their immediate share of the debt is $127,529 (see USDebtClock.org) due immediately, they are angry. The 13th amendment ending slavery has been rescinded. The past generation wanted nice costly programs for free and were willing to sell their children in order to drive new Cadillac’s now. Well, the Cadillac’s are in the auto wrecking yards, Communist China owns a tenth of us and the bills are due. What is worse the older generation is still anxious to incur even more debt on our defenseless children and grandchildren. Are we the most debt addicted, insensitive generation in all human history?
But there is hope. When you go bankrupt in your personal life you are expected to sell everything that you own to get out of debt. The nation has one asset left that could probably vaporize this national debt and do so in one generation but I am reluctant to bring attention to it until we have learned the lesson that we cannot spend beyond our means without someone paying for it latter. Unfortunately, neither party is fully there yet. Sell government land. Most are surprised to learn that the federal government unconstitutionally owns a third of the landmass of the United States. The Constitution limits the amount of land that the federal government can have to 10 square miles for a capital and land acquired through the limits of the Constitution for military purposes.
Over the decades the federal government withheld the land that went with statehood in the West. New states were so anxious to gain statehood that they overlooked the omission. According to public land statistics Alaska owns only 1 ½ % of itself. Arizona 56% of itself, California 52 ½ % of itself, Idaho 36% of itself, Nevada, a mere 12% of itself, and Utah 36 ½ % of itself. We, of course, would have to restrict foreign countries and perhaps place a limit on individual takes, but the idea would be to spend every penny derived from the sales to liquidating our 14 trillion dollars of debt.