“Billions” and “trillions” of dollars are bandied about by politicians and newspapers as if the rest of us are supposed to know what those expressions mean. Well, we don’t!
A billion is a thousand million, or 1,000,000,000. With approximately 250,000,000 people in the U.S., a billion dollars equates to $4 for each man, woman and child in the country. Or $16 for a family of four. That I can understand.
A trillion is a million million, or 1,000,000,000,000. For the approximately 250 million people in the U.S., a trillion dollars is $4,000 for each person or $16,000 for a family of four.
When House Budget Committee chairman John Kasich states that the national debt is $4.7 trillion dollars, he should be saying that the U.S. government has put every one of us in debt to the tune of more than $18,000. Or, for that family of four, $72,000. That is something that everyone ought to be able to understand.
Perhaps the Tribune could start reporting the per-individual or per-family figure in parentheses after the billions and trillions so that the rest of us mortals can understand what is really happening to our money.
