Speaking to Congress in February 1981, Reagan said: A few weeks ago I called such a figure, a trillion dollars [the current debt then], incomprehensible, and I’ve been trying ever since to think of a way to illustrate how big a trillion really is. And the best I could come up with is that if you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in yo…
Speaking to Congress in February 1981, Reagan said: A few weeks ago I called such a figure, a trillion dollars [the current debt then], incomprehensible, and I’ve been trying ever since to think of a way to illustrate how big a trillion really is. And the best I could come up with is that if you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you’d be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of thousand-dollar bills 67 miles high.
And that's just a trillion. Our debt is around 34.4 trillion now and it increases about 1 trillion every 100 days. So if a trillion dollar stack of bills is 67 miles high, 34.4 trillion is a stack that is almost 2,305 miles high. Unimaginable.
Speaking to Congress in February 1981, Reagan said: A few weeks ago I called such a figure, a trillion dollars [the current debt then], incomprehensible, and I’ve been trying ever since to think of a way to illustrate how big a trillion really is. And the best I could come up with is that if you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you’d be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of thousand-dollar bills 67 miles high.
And that's just a trillion. Our debt is around 34.4 trillion now and it increases about 1 trillion every 100 days. So if a trillion dollar stack of bills is 67 miles high, 34.4 trillion is a stack that is almost 2,305 miles high. Unimaginable.
Wow.