I find it absolutely insulting to my intelligence the government pretending that the proposed cut in spending of 62 billion dollars, which has not been approved in the senate, is anywhere near what is needed to stop this car from going over the cliff. The DEFICIT for this year alone is 1.60 trillion dollars give or take a few billion. 62 billion is less than 4% of the deficit! Am I missing something here? A 4% cut in spending is nothing! Why aren’t they proposing cuts of 20 or 30%, which would be like 320 to 480 billion dollars. And if we are really serious, why not balance the budget and cut the ENTIRE deficit of 1.6 TRILLION dollars?
All of which led me to asking how BIG is a trillion anyways. I would venture to say most people have no idea how BIG a number a trillion really is. I know I didn’t until I did the math. In terms of seconds, there are 86,400 seconds in a day. A million seconds ago was about 11.5 days ago. I know no big deal 11 days. A billion seconds ago is 31.7 years. Ok I know that’s not exactly earth shattering as most of us are older than 31 years. So we go from 11 days to 31 years in comparing a million to a billion. Anybody want to guess how long ago is a TRILLION seconds? 300 years, 700 years? Would you believe a TRILLION seconds is 31,688 years ago? Yes you read that right. A billion to a trillion is the same as going from 31 years to 31,000 years. So a ONE-year deficit of 1.6 trillion is about 50,700 years ago in seconds. We are ludicrous to think 62 billion dollars in budget cuts comes anywhere near to solving our problem of government spending.
God Bless,
Art
