How Much Is A Trillion Dollars?

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Being able to have your picture taken next to five million dollars in cash drew a crowd at this casino. But picturing a trillion dollars? That’s beyond the scope of mere mortals. And yet that’s exactly what we’re expected to do as things like bailouts, wars and budget deficits now routinely feature this princely sum.

So how much is a trillion dollars? 200,000 display cases like the one in our story. A million million… a 1 followed by 12 zeros!

How long would it take you to grab a trillion dollars in a “Cash Grab” booth?

“Oh, at least one lifetime I would think, yeah.”
-Karen Cutler, Casino Contestant

Don’t bet on it, Karen. If you grabbed a dollar a second, you’d be standing in that booth for 32,000 years.

How much is a trillion dollars?

In fact, a trillion dollars would pay the entire cost of college for every student now in high school in America.

A trillion dollars could pave the entire Interstate highway system with 23 karat gold leaf.

A trillion dollars is enough to double the 700,000 cops now on the beat across America… for 32 years.

A trillion dollars could build 16 million habitat for humanity houses… enough to house more than 50 million people.

A trillion dollars could send everyone in America on a lavish vacation to Tahiti.

As fun as it is to visualize a trillion dollars, what’s less fun is trying to pay off trillions of dollars in debt, which is exactly what we’ll have to do. As of this posting, the United States is $11 trillion in debt, meaning every man, woman and child in America owes almost $37,000.

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