1 War = 1 Trillion Dollar - How Much Is That?

[kpete]

1 War = 1 Trillion Dollar - How Much Is That?

Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2006-02-21 11:21. Media


There are 86,400 seconds in. . . . . one day.
1 million seconds in. . . . . . . . . 11.5 days.
1 billion seconds in. . . . . . . . . 31.5 years.
1 trillion seconds in. . . . . . . . .31,500 years.


The next time you read in the papers something about a trillion dollars, consider that that number represents a-dollar-a-second for 31,500 years, from the age of mastodons and woolley mammoths all the way down to the present!

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=comment/reply/8052

[Brotherjohn]

1. Enough to cost each and every American over $3000. No, check that...

... after interest and time, probably enough to cost each and every one of our granchildren a year's salary.

Not that dollars are more important than the lives lost, but this might put it in perspective for the average American worker.

[DrRang]

2. All the real estate in the United States, commericial or residential,

developed or undeveloped, is said to be worth about 17 trillion. So--it's 1/17th of the entire real property worth of the country.

[Coexist]

3. more than enough to secure our borders and ports

without having to kill people, or bury our soldiers.

In fact, it would CREATE jobs for Americans. Imagine that.

[Bozita]

4. It's a million piles of money. Each pile contains a million dollars

[CornField]

5. How much is a trillion? (From the Des Moines Register)

The Register had an excellent opinion piece about this at the end of January.

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060124/OPINION03/601240345/1110

War's High Price: Cost includes the investments neglected at home

You can't put a price tag on national security. When the survival of the nation is at stake, you spend whatever it takes and don't quibble over costs.

But the invasion of Iraq was a war of choice, not of survival. Americans should not only be aware of the costs of the war, but also consider whether the money might have been better spent at home.

...

Even $1 trillion is a huge sum. Stiglitz notes that it's enough to keep Social Security solvent for the next 75 years, twice over.

As an investment in our nation's future, it's enough to pay for:

• Four years at a private college (average cost about $21,000 per year) for nearly 48 million American young people.
  
  
• Four years at a public university (average cost $5,500 per year) for more than 180 million Americans.
  
  
• Wiring virtually every home in American for broadband Internet, at a cost of $200 billion, and have $800 billion left to spend. (Connecting every home and business in America with broadband internet would produce an estimated $500 billion in additional economic growth. That's an example of how investing money here at home can pay bigger dividends than investing in foreign wars.)
  

(Much more at link)

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There's also a sidebar in the print version that you won't see online. A box, one column by about 2.5 inches: "How much is a trillion?"

Text:


How much is a trillion?
With all the zeros, a trillion dollars looks like:
$1,000,000,000,000
That's enough for 10,000 Powerball jackpots of $100 million each.
It would pay for the roughly $5 billion state general-fund budget for Iowa for the next 200 years.
It makes something like the proposed high-speed rail network to serve the Midwest, costing an estimated $3.5 billion, seem like a trifle. A trillion dollars would build 285 such networks.