So how much time is a trillion seconds? It turns out that a trillion seconds is 31,546 years. So if a person spent money at the rate of a dollar per second ($3,600 per hour), it would take more time to blow through all that money than time has passed since (probably) the invention of the road or the damn wheel. So what do I learn from this thought experiment? Several things, actually.
First, the United States of America blows through a phenomenal amount of money in a year. It's just unfathomable how much money this country chews through.
Second, despite what people say, I don't believe anymore that this is "taxpayer money," unless you are willing to say that it is the taxpayer ten thousand years down the road that we are actually borrowing from. A quick google search indicates that all of the taxes collected in a year lie somewhere between $3 and 4$ trillion, but that's also counting what states collect as state taxes. So if you look at this amount of debt that we have as a country, you have but one conclusion to make: it will either get paid off or it won't get paid off. And I'm taking a realistic view and saying, "This is not going to get paid off."
Third, I don't think that people are lending us this kind of money either. People like to use "China" as a go to example of someone that holds our debt, but a quick google search shows that China owns maybe $1.5 trillion of our debt. That's not all that much in large number terms when you consider that Apple is a trillion dollar company. They basically own Apple. Again...these are mind-boggling huge numbers.
Anyway, so I think the United States spins money out of nothing because we are a country with currency that we can just print and we can just say, "this has value." Okay, then. It's an ever increasing pile of debt for things that we have bought, and the common people (like you and me) like to point at it and say, "You law makers need to be responsible with taxpayer money because we are on the hook for that!" Only...I don't think we are, and we should stop saying that. There's no way you and I and anyone else could pay back that debt that I can think of. However, I'm not an economist.
So, you might ask, where is my thought experiment going? Well, I think that we should view the national debt in a different light: it's the biggest bargain in world history. Given what we give in taxes, we get way more back as a return investment. All the trillions and trillions of dollars of things that we all benefit from by far outstrips our ability to actually pay for by many times. And since there doesn't appear to be any consequence to not living like this, eh who cares? So it's like getting something for nothing, and we should be proud of that. Americans should be proud of the national debt. To shrink the example down, who else can say they spent a dollar to get a thousand dollars back in services and goods? That seems like the best bargain on earth. It doesn't make sense to me, but it is what it is. Countries play by different rules.
And that is the end of my thought experiment.
