A million, a billion, a trillion… no big deal.  One can picture Dr. Evil from Austin Powers swapping out letters as Number 2 lets him know that he’s not demanding enough money.  It’s only an “m”, a “b”, or a “tr” right?  They’re only letters.

Except… they’re not.  The words used to describe numbers that large are quite deceptive.

In researching the origin of the words, I came to the conclusion that the people who coined the terms weren’t trying to facilitate financial deception.  I just don’t think that they thought that debt could ever be described using those terms… they probably thought that trillions would only ever be used to describe the number of stars in the sky.

Million, billion, and trillion weren’t originally like .99 cents or 9/10ths of a cent at the gas pump.  The latter were coined with the explicit purpose of financial deception.

However, modern economists and governments are definitely using the terms to hide the true volume of the debt being carried.  Swapping out m’s for b’s and tr’s like it’s not a big deal.

But it is a big deal.

Do you have any idea how big a number “trillion” is?  Or how long it might take to count from one to one trillion?

Let’s get a grasp on exactly how big one trillion actually is… but instead of counting debt that will never be repaid, let’s use time.

One million seconds, is about eleven and a half days.

A billion seconds is about 32 years.

A trillion seconds is about 32,000 years.

A million seconds ago the 2024 Oscar nominations were announced.  A billion seconds ago the USA sent the men’s basketball “dream team” to the Barcelona Olympics.  A trillion seconds ago we were living in caves and there was a full-on ice age.

Trillion is a huge number.  If someone offers you a trillion one dollar bills with the caveat being you must personally initial all of them, you should refuse the offer, because you won’t be able to keep up your end.

We should come up with a new word for trillion.  A word that actually acknowledges the true numerical volume being described.  Something long, and extremely difficult to pronounce.  Or something that describes the gravity of taking on that kind of debt.  We could just string a bunch of words together into a new word, like the Dutch do.

Maybe, Congratulationsonmakingyourchildrenintoslavesyoustupidmorons.

Or, Onlyanidiotsocietywouldtakeonthatmuchdebt.

Perhaps, Stopelectingpeoplewhospendmorethanyouhave.

Because the word trillion, when it comes to describing debt in terms of 2024 U.S. Dollars, is about as big an understatement as has ever existed.

Image generated by AI.