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[okie smokie]

Keep hearing everyone talk about the national debt.  Over 22 trillion dollars.  So to put this into perspective I did some simple math.  1 (ONE) trillion single dollar bills.  Each one dollar bill is 6.12 inches wide.  Just rounding off to 6 inches, it would take 2 dollars side to side to equal one foot.  10560 single dollar bills per mile.  One trillion divided by 10560 equals 94.69696969 or rounded off 94.7 million miles. Enough miles to get to Mars and almost back to earth. That is one trillion dollars.  Not sure there is even enough paper to print that many single dollars.  How does our govt. even find enough programs to spend that amount on? 
Now take that and multiply by 22 (national debt) and you get 2.083 billion miles of $1 dollar bills you could go to the sun and back to earth about 10 times plus or minus. If you used $10 bills you could make the trip at least once.  (93 million miles each way).
Not sure you can find enough programs to spend it on. 
 Doesn't smell right does it?   ?

[Kristin Meredith]

I am amazed it is only that much.  The new USS aircraft carrier Gerald Ford cost 13 billion -- yes billion -- dollars.  One aircraft carrier.  The US has 11 of them.  The aircraft carrier is part of a strike group.  A carrier strike group averages 27 billion to build.  A strike group has about 8,000 navy personnel attached to each -- that doesn't include the people on land who support the group, the naval bases, the naval air stations.  So just those personnel's salaries are $288 million per year at a $3,000 per month average salary.  Then we provide full medical and dental for them, housing, military commissaries and military hotels/vacation spots.  A lot more money.  And this is just for the aircraft carrier group, not the whole navy. Subs are a separate and very expensive group.

Now, do the same for army, air force, marines and coast guard.  And their academies.

As of about mid-2019, the U.S. cost of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan is $6.4 trillion since they began in 2001. That does not include all the aid we have provided to those countries, both military and civilian. According to the U.S. State Dept, as of July 2019: " Since 2001, the United States has allocated approximately $29 billion in civilian assistance for Afghanistan."  One country -- we do that for a lot of countries around the world, but we have dumped billions into the Middle East.

I could talk about the state of our infra structure -- roads, bridges, schools -- the fact of low wages for certain groups like teachers, nurses, social workers, police (people who are important to our communities) and perhaps how we have not spent our treasure wisely in a manner which benefits our nation, but I am trying not to be too political and stir up a debate.

Just saying that military spending, especially on overseas conflicts with the foreign aid -- both civilian and military -- which then flows into those countries, burns through our tax dollars.  And I don't think the average American has any idea how much we spend on just that one segment of our national budget.

[Osborn Cox]

Interesting insight in both of those posts, definitely makes you think.    It’s a mess for sure, and one thing I firmly believe in is that we need to stop supporting the world.     We have plenty on our own plates to take care of first, charity starts at home.

[GatorDave]

I am amazed it is only that much.  The new USS aircraft carrier Gerald Ford cost 13 billion -- yes billion -- dollars.  One aircraft carrier.  The US has 11 of them.  The aircraft carrier is part of a strike group.  A carrier strike group averages 27 billion to build.  A strike group has about 8,000 navy personnel attached to each -- that doesn't include the people on land who support the group, the naval bases, the naval air stations.  So just those personnel's salaries are $288 million per year at a $3,000 per month average salary.  Then we provide full medical and dental for them, housing, military commissaries and military hotels/vacation spots.  A lot more money.  And this is just for the aircraft carrier group, not the whole navy. Subs are a separate and very expensive group.

Now, do the same for army, air force, marines and coast guard.  And their academies.

As of about mid-2019, the U.S. cost of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan is $6.4 trillion since they began in 2001. That does not include all the aid we have provided to those countries, both military and civilian. According to the U.S. State Dept, as of July 2019: " Since 2001, the United States has allocated approximately $29 billion in civilian assistance for Afghanistan."  One country -- we do that for a lot of countries around the world, but we have dumped billions into the Middle East.

I could talk about the state of our infra structure -- roads, bridges, schools -- the fact of low wages for certain groups like teachers, nurses, social workers, police (people who are important to our communities) and perhaps how we have not spent our treasure wisely in a manner which benefits our nation, but I am trying not to be too political and stir up a debate.

Just saying that military spending, especially on overseas conflicts with the foreign aid -- both civilian and military -- which then flows into those countries, burns through our tax dollars.  And I don't think the average American has any idea how much we spend on just that one segment of our national budget.

The federal government doesn't determine how much or even pay for nurses, teachers, and police.  That is state/local governments and the private sector.  Plus, I'm not even a little bit in favor of our federal government meddling in our schools.  We already have enough propaganda being taught in them.  What the federal government needs to get out of also is all of these social programs that tend to hinder more than they help.  Anything the government touches tends to go down the pooper (the VA and social security to name a couple).  The federal government should stick to defending the country and infrastructure like it was originally intended, and then try to stay out of our lives as much as possible.

[Kristin Meredith]

Just like the feds give aid to foreign countries, the feds could give grants to hospitals, schools, communities to improve salaries and facilities.  They mandate unfunded regulations all the time that state and local have to pay for, so would not be hard to give grants and aid.

[Th3Batman86]

The best way I ever heard of to fathom these amounts of money was to think of them as time.

1,000 seconds is roughly 17 minutes

1,000,000 seconds is about 12 days

1,000,000,000 seconds is about 32 YEARS (yeah, big jump between a million and a billion)

1,000,000,000,000 seconds is roughly 31,710 years

[okie smokie]

Nice comments.  I appreciate the cost of what the gov't. is doing.  But I think we may not all appreciate what these vast amounts really mean or we have just become immune to the meaning.   Like the man said " A trillion here and trillion there; some day this could really run into money."  Just watch for the Fed to start raising interest rates again. Could be a signal to hunker down. BWTHDIK?

[GatorDave]

Just like the feds give aid to foreign countries, the feds could give grants to hospitals, schools, communities to improve salaries and facilities.  They mandate unfunded regulations all the time that state and local have to pay for, so would not be hard to give grants and aid.

I don't want the federal government getting involved in schools.  The federal government involved in schools is what's done in totalitarian regimes.  I can barely stand states being involved in the school system, because rather than teaching anymore, an agenda is being pushed.  It would be even worse if the federal government was involved.

[Bar-B-Lew]

I don't see interest rates going up until 2022 and that may be a slow start from there.  I think the world has pretty much locked itself in a corner where interest rates will be low for quite sometime comparative to what it may have been prior to the last few years.

[Darwin]

The US debt clock is showing 26.6 Trillion just now.  Not sure how accurate it is. 

[glitchy]

Interesting insight in both of those posts, definitely makes you think.    It’s a mess for sure, and one thing I firmly believe in is that we need to stop supporting the world.     We have plenty on our own plates to take care of first, charity starts at home.

I think this is why no one calls us on these debts. It seems we help almost anyone at any time. I’m not saying everything the US has ever done is perfect, but a lot of countries don’t build the military they could build and really need to adequately protect their citizens knowing we’ll likely step in and protect them if they are attacked unjustly. Who’s going to tell their personal bodyguard to pay up?