February 5, 2024
Just a trillion here, and a trillion there
By Nick Lopez
A million, a billion, a trillion… no big deal. One can picture Dr. Evil from Austin Powers swapping out letters as Number 2 lets him know that he’s not demanding enough money. It’s only an “m”, a “b”, or a “tr” right? They’re only letters.
Except… they’re not. The words used to describe numbers that large are quite deceptive.
In researching the origin of the words, I came to the conclusion that the people who coined the terms weren’t trying to facilitate financial deception. I just don’t think that they thought that debt could ever be described using those terms… they probably thought that trillions would only ever be used to describe the number of stars in the sky.
Million, billion, and trillion weren’t originally like .99 cents or 9/10ths of a cent at the gas pump. The latter were coined with the explicit purpose of financial deception.
However, modern economists and governments are definitely using the terms to hide the true volume of the debt being carried. Swapping out m’s for b’s and tr’s like it’s not a big deal.
But it is a big deal.
Do you have any idea how big a number “trillion” is? Or how long it might take to count from one to one trillion?
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/02/just_a_trillion_here_and_a_trillion_there.html