How Much Is A Trillion Dollars?

submitted by Roger Lemere, a Petersburgh Shocked Senior Citizen
Most people you ask will tell you that they can’t comprehend how much a trillion dollars really is – too many zeros. There are 12 zeros.
Our national debt is over 14 trillion dollars and growing by nearly 2 billion every day. Our dollar is now worth only $.79 and decreasing.
The federal government is borrowing, printing and spending money like there is no tomorrow.
So, my curiosity got the best of me, and I sat down with my calculator and micrometer to figure out how high a stack of $100 bills it would take to equal 1 trillion dollars.
Here is what I came up with:
1. 1 mile = 5,280′ x 12″ = 63,360″
2. 1 trillion = $1,000,000,000,000
3. Paper currency thickness = .004″
4. 10 billion $100 dollar bills = 1 trillion dollars
5. 10 billion (10,000,000,000) x .004″ thickness = 40 million (40,000,000) inches
6. 40,000,000″ divided by 63,360″ = a 631.3 mile high stack
7. 631.3 x 14 trillion in national debt = an 8,834 mile high stack
8. This is greater than the distance from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again.
Do you now have a greater sense of how much one trillion and 14 trillion dollars really is? It is a staggering amount!! A 40 billion dollar cut in our debt sounds like a lot, but it is a piddling amount, only .003%.