$1,000,000,000

 

The next time you hear a politician use the words "billion" casually, think about whether you want that politician spending your tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into perspective in one of its releases:

A billion seconds ago, it was 1974 (31.7 years).
A billion minutes ago, the Roman Empire was flourishing.(1900 years)
A billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in the Stone Age (114,000 years)
A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate Washington spends it.

 

Interesting facts about a Trillion!

1,000,000,000,000

Lets start with a dollar bill which is about .0043" thick and multiply it times a trillion we get 4,300,000,000 inches. If you divide by 12 we get 358,000,000 feet or 67866 miles. Now multiply that times the national debt of approximately 4 trillion dollars and you have a mountain of debt 271,465 miles high!!!! It is approximately 238,857 miles to the moon. Remember this is with dollar bills stacked on top of each other not end to end.

You can also do the math on a stack of $100 bills which are approximately 1/2" high and equals $10,000.

Our national debt, if we paid it at the rate of about $180 a second, would take over 704 years to pay off, if there was not interest. If interest is compounded, and it will be, it will take thousands of years to pay off.