If you are going to buy sunglasses, make them Ray Bans. And if you are going to buy a car, it better be a Lamborghini Aventador. While you are at it, go ahead and throw a Hawaiian beach house and a helicopter into the shopping cart.
Why not? Because you realize that you have a budget. You cannot spend beyond your means. Somehow, what simply makes sense to you and me does not click in Washington D.C. and now our national debt has risen to a towering $15 trillion.
Of course, that is not quite fair. Most of the federal government’s spending is far more necessary than the frivolous examples provided. Medicare, Medicaid, the military, roads, and many other government programs are worthy, helpful things that need to be funded. But we just cannot do it all.
Let’s examine a more fair example. There are countless worthy charities in the world. The average American could probably name ten right off the top of his head. Just trying to donate regularly to those ten charities on top of everyday expenses would break that middle-class philanthropist’s bank. Now imagine that instead of choosing which ones most need your help and focusing on those, the generous but misguided man or woman decides to donate to these organizations on a credit card. It gets worse. That credit card is not even his, it is made out in their son’s name.
No one would do that, it just doesn’t make sense. But somehow in the mind of a politician, it is perfectly legitimate to push mountains of debt onto the next generation. Which in any other amount would not be a big deal, after all everyone has to do their part.
But the national debt has risen to a level that is beyond extreme. It has reached a stratosphere that is beyond comprehension. For the average human, it takes about 92 years to earn a million dollars. If someone spent that $1 million everyday starting on the day baby Jesus was born, he would not even have spent a trillion dollars today. He would have spent around $700 billion. Roughly the same amount the banks got in their 2008 bailout.
The human mind cannot fully grasp the monstrous gravity of a trillion. It is so far beyond what we normally deal with that it is virtually impossible to visualize the amount of money the United States government is hemorrhaging.
One mathematician put it this way, “1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years.” A trillion bricks would reach to the moon and back… twice. After laying a trillion dollars end to end the line would stretch over 96,906,566 miles, well more than enough to reach the sun. And if the entire human population hopped on a scale, we would all way around a trillion pounds, including us fat Americans. Keep in mind that the US debt is over $15 trillion. That much money could literally make a sewn-together rug of dollars the size of Florida and still have enough extra material to make a dollar rug of Rhode Island.
Politicians are frantically searching for a solution to this dire situation, but it seems incredibly far gone. If Washington somehow managed to pay down a dollar a day, every day for 80 years they would have paid off $2.5 billion. Nowhere near the amount we need, but still an impressive sum of money. Except that the US government spends that much every six hours or so.
America is in trouble. There is no other way to put it. We are addicted to spending and for all of our efforts to quit, we are just as stuck as ever. America is truly in a crisis. Our national debt recently passed a milestone. The $15 trillion we’ve racked up in these short 235 years as a country has passed the size of our economy. At this point there is no easy solution out there. But we need to find one, fast.
In this election cycle be on the lookout for which politicians promise you everything you want. Watch for politicians that offer to pay for all of your expenses, give you a job, and purchase your insurance. While all that sounds nice, it comes with a hefty price tag. And I’d much rather have a government around to do the minimal necessary things than spend it beyond the point of exhaustion and not leave a healthy country for our children. That’s the path we’re on now. Hopefully we can remedy this heartbreaking situation, together.
