Perhaps the notion “Too big to fail” became acceptable following the economic crisis of 2008. Now, during these times of coronavirus, talks of economic stimulus includes the term “trillion” …and sometimes even as much as $3 trillion. But what does that mean?
To a guy that seldom sees a $100 bill in his billfold, one trillion is mindboggling – so big, in fact, that nobody using the term can take any personal understanding in using it. Consider these attempts to help us consider what a trillion means, as presented by various online website sources:
In 2017 Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ worth was estimated at $86 billion. If this were stacked using $100 bills, the bills would stand 5.7 miles tall – 10 times higher than most commercial airplanes flying at 30,000 feet. And this is substantially less than a trillion. One trillion in $100 dollar bills is 631 miles!
If the average Joe earning $50,000 annually didn’t pay any tax, student loans, rent, food bills, heating, travel bills – or any expenditure at all – it would take 20,000,000 years to save a trillion bucks (this is longer than humans have existed).
If today you were able to go back a billion seconds in time, you’d return to 1987. If you go back a trillion seconds, you’d be around 30,000 B.C.
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