In an article by noted historian Larry
Schweikart of the University of Dayton, our current national debt is outlined:
"Whether one accepts the government’s estimates of a national debt that nears $10 trillion, or whether one thinks the numbers provided by Richard Fisher of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which includes all the “unfunded” parts of Medicare (A, B, and D) at another $85.6 trillion, for a total of $95.6 trillion, the United States faces a staggering level of debt.[i] And Fisher’s numbers do not include Social Security, which now, for the first time, has seen its out-flows exceed its income, and which adds another $10 trillion (at least) to the totals. The Medicare debt alone would stick each American family of four with a bill of $1.3 million, or about 25 times the average household’s income. Taken together, these levels of debt exceed the Gross National Product of probably half the nations in the world put together."
(Source: http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/36680/)
Depending on how you do the math, that makes our national debt around $100 trillion. That's $100,000,000,000,000. Let's see if we can get a handle on this:
- 100 trillion is 10 to the 12th power.
- According to an article on Wikipedia, a trillion is the number of bacteria on the human body, and half the amount of ants on the earth.
- The national debt, in $100 dollar bills, would fill several hundred warehouses. Look at this page to get a better idea.
- A single trillion dollars is a stack of $1000 bills that is 67.9 miles high, according to the video on this page. Therefore, the national debt, would be a stack of $1000 bills 679 miles high! Which would go beyond the earth's atmosphere, and reach out into space. A stack that size, laid down, would reach from Dallas, TX to Louisville, CO.
- If a mile is 63,360 inches, then one trillion inches is still over 1.5 billion miles!
- One hundred trillion miles is about a million times farther than our sun is from earth.
- For more, click here.
So, $100 trillion in national debt is a staggering amount that we are leaving to future generations to pay off. The current events in Greece are what we have to look forward to, not to mention our loss of standing and power in the international community if we don't do something about it NOW!
