When press reports indicate that a CBO cost analysis of a health care proposal will exceed one trillion dollars, or when they report the February congressional vote to increase the federal debt ceiling to over 13 trillion dollars, most people do not have much of a concept of what that means. The following may help one gain a concept of the magnitude of a trillion dollars.
Take out a piece of paper and mark out 10 inches. Each inch in our chart will represent 100,000 dollars. This is roughly the equivalent to two years worth of the median household income in the United States. Ten inches, represents one million dollars and therefore about 20 years of family earnings.
Take your sheet outside and go for a walk. Count your paces. As you walk along occasionally glance at your chart to remind you how “far” one million dollars is. After 278 steps, stop. At typical pacing, one should have walked two complete football fields and almost 80 yards of a third. This distance is the equivalent of one billion dollars.
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