HOW MUCH IS A TRILLION?

This shows the real problem for the Obama administration. Trillions of dollars in debt.

How much is a trillion? In trying to comprehend the budget deficits that the administration is proposing, we face the problem of what academics call “insensitivity to scope.” It affects us all; we can understand something on a small scale but have a difficult time comprehending the same thing on a massive scale.Insensitivity to scope is a major obstacle to understanding budget deficits running to the trillions over the next decade. People simply have trouble understanding nmbers so big. One way I've read to explain what a trillion is is to make it accessible, say by thinking of one dollar as one second of time. That may make it easier to comprehend what we are facing in the debt we are about to incur.

So here goes. If a dollar is one second in time:

1. Who was President one million seconds ago? (Don't look, in the privacy of your own home, take a guess.
2. Who was President one billion seconds ago?
3. Who was President one trillion seconds ago?

ANSWERS:

1) Approximately one million seconds ago (about 11 days ago), Barak Obama was President. Arlen Spector announced his intention to leave the Republican Party and join the Democratic Party; the 2009 NBA playoffs were in full gear; Joe Biden was warning against taking the subway.

2) Approximately one billion seconds ago (1977-78), Jimmy Carter was President; Anwar Sadat visited Israel; the Sex Pistols were hot; Bruce Jenner was a leading celebrity; John Belushi was on Saturday Night Live; Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran; Barak Obama was in high school and Teddy Kennedy was divorcing his first wife.

3) Approximately one trillion seconds ago (30,000 b.c.), no one was President. Neanderthals camped in Europe; the Great Lakes had yet to be formed; the world's few homo sapiens had barely emerged from Africa; woolly mamoths, sabertooth tigers and giant sloths roamed much of the world unmolested by humanoids.

That is how big a trillion is.