Trillion Is the New Billion

By Dee Dee Myers

How much is a billion?

When I was a kid, it used to seem like a huge number, somewhere between a zillion and infinity.

A billion seconds is just shy of a lifetime, more than 63 years. A billion pounds is roughly 500,000 tons—or 200,000 SUVS all piled together. And a billion dollars stacked one on top of another would reach 67.9 miles into the sky. Laid end-to-end, those same billion dollars would wrap nearly four times four times around the earth. In other words, it’s real money.

But what can it buy? Way back in 1982, when Forbes Magazine first published its list of the 400 richest people in the world, it included 13 billionaires. By 2006, a net worth of $999,999,999 wasn’t enough to get you noticed; everyone on the list was a billionaire. To be sure, there’s been inflation over the past 25 years. But this isn’t Zimbabwe, where inflation rates have run as high as 1,200 percent in recent years, forcing people to carry sacks of cash around just to buy a cup of coffee. Rather, the global run up in wealth—at least for the privileged few—has desensitized us to what the numbers really mean. A new Gulf Stream V can cost $50 million. The New York Yankees’ 2009 payroll will be roughly $140 million. And an NFL franchise can set you back $1 billion. It takes ever bigger numbers to get us to shock and awe.

On Wednesday, the Senate added a new benefit to the stimulus package. Under the plan, the federal government would give homebuyers a tax credit worth ten percent of the purchase price, up to $15,000. Good idea, I thought. And a bargain at just $18.5 billion! (Never mind that we could staple those dollars together, and wrap them around the earth 36 times.)

In 1993, when a billion still meant something, President Clinton proposed a $16 billion stimulus package. Even though the country was coming out of a recession, the economy wasn’t creating jobs as quickly as the new president wanted, and he hoped a quick infusion of federal cash would jump start the job market. But the proposal failed, in no small measure because it was too small. Still, his economic advisors—a serious bunch, indeed—argued that it would have made a difference. Last February, with the economy descending into a serious recession, the Congress passed and President Bush signed a $168 billion stimulus bill. Even that unprecedented amount wasn’t enough to prevent the a wave of home mortgage foreclosures from capsizing the financial markets and sending the economy into a nosedive. And it ain’t over yet.

Now, President Obama is admonishing Congress to keep the total cost of his stimulus under $900 billion. $900 billion! Leaving aside the debate about whether this is the right medicine for the ailing economy (and I think it probably is), the numbers are staggering. 900 million seconds adds up to more than 57,000 years. 900 billion pounds is equal to roughly half the carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. And 900 billion dollar bills, laid end to end, would stretch almost to the sun.

As Senator Everett Dirksen famously said in 1969, “A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Only 40 years later, it turns out “trillion” is the new “billion.”

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