SamSaid!

TRILLIONS

     I don't think there is any way in which the average citizen can relate to the enormity of a Trillion dollars. Our minds just don't work that way.

     Years ago when I first began to review Accounting Statements and Financial reports, there was a little notation that said (000 omitted). That meant that a $Million appeared as $1000. Thus, mentally, everyone had to add three zeroes mentally to get the real number.

     Fairly simple system that worked well. And in those days, a million dollars wasn't exactly considered chicken feed. I recall the famous quip of Senator Everett Dirksen (Ill.) who commented during a Federal Budget session, “A million here, a million there — pretty soon it adds up to real money”. Of course, that was long before the age of Billions. Now we are in the Age of trillions, and a trillion is 1,000 billions Just think for a minute about a mere BILLION.  A billion seconds ago was in 1959  — 46 years ago; a billion minutes ago, Jesus Christ was walking on the earth; a billion hours ago we were in the Stone age. But in the age of Mega-Federal spending, the most recent expenditure of a Billion dollars by the US Congress was just 8 hours ago. Now, translate that into a 5-10 TRILLION dollar budget. That amounts to a thousand Billions times 5 or 10. Is it any wonder why our leaders in Washington brush off Billions of dollars of unnecessarey spending as trivial or ho-hum?

     So now we enter the age of trillions when Financial and Accounting statements carry the little notation (000,000) omitted. I guess it makes sense when you imagine figures or entries  like $5,000,000,000,000. I can imagine $5,000,000 dollars in an age when ball players or entertainers can make $20-30M per year. But Billions are a thousand millions and trillions are a thousand billions.

    How do we hire scorekeepers who can really think in those terms? How should we think of financial statements or budget figures that round off the numbers to the nearest Billion?  If the variance is only $450 million, just round off the figures to the nearest Billion and forget it. I wonder if I can do my income tax return that way.

     Now I understand a trillion  — the odds of rounding off my income tax to the nearest thousand dollars is about a trillion to one. Now I am getting the picture!