March 13, 2024
The Greenback Mile
By Mr. J. Michael
While many Americans were nursing a New Year's holiday hangover the U.S. national debt crossed the $34 trillion threshold. Worse, our government's propensity for writing checks against an overdrawn bank account will add an additional one trillion dollars to that debt about every one hundred days with the debt on track to climb past the $35 trillion mark in April, 2024. In a sane world such reckless government spending would prompt a taxpayer revolt along with a nationwide demand for wholesale resignations of debtaholic politicians. Yet, America’s ballooning national debt continues to increase with few citizens calling for responsible heads to roll.
$35 trillion is a staggering, unimaginable sum of money. The majority of the citizenry understands the concepts of hundreds-of-thousands and millions because we are exposed to these values every day. Houses cost hundreds-of-thousands. Many of us can drive over to the rich section of town and look at million-dollar homes. Even the concept of a billion is easily understood by most. However, its likely very few citizens truly understand just how massive a trillion of anything is and this ignorance is partly responsible for our national debt apathy. It might help to visualize $35 trillion in a real-world setting.
Imagine converting the debt into 35 trillion one-dollar bills and then laying those bills side-by-side (like cobblestones on a road) to pave the length of an interstate highway, specifically Interstate 80 (I-80). I-80 stretches east to west across the continental U.S. for 2,900.76 miles connecting New Jersey to San Francisco. Assume an average of twelve feet per travel lane or forty-eight feet total across the four lanes of I-80 (in effect, an area 48 feet wide by 2,900.76 miles long). It takes 2,277,345 (2.277 million) one-dollar bills to "pave" one mile of these four lanes of interstate highway. To pave the entire four lanes of I-80 from coast to coast will take 6.606 billion one-dollar bills. However, 6.6 billion is only 0.00019 percent of the almost $35 trillion national debt. To display the entire debt across the length and breadth of Interstate 80 we have to stack dollars in layers. To be exact, it will take 5,298 layers of dollar bills laid atop I-80 to display the whole debt.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/03/the_greenback_mile.html
