This is factoid punidtry. If you know that it takes 1,000 billion to make a trillion, you have the right idea. And if you know it takes 1,000 million to make a billion, you are there.

But this is pointless, since dollar values are essentially arbitrary. If we say $1,000 dollars is now tradeable for a new US Dollar, our deficits are back in the billions, and we don’t have to worry about using the T for a while. Problem solved! Since now everyone can easily remember that billions come after millions!

That is why what matters is the measure of the nation’s deficit/debt relative to the nation’s GDP. That is a measure not arbitrary and subject to big scary zeros fippancy.

My guess, though, is that less than 5% of Americans can tell you what in the word “GDP” stands for. And fewer still could tell you what the ratio is between GDP and the deficit and/or debt. (1%? Maybe?)

That last paragraph is why we are screwed, not that people are not conversant in converting million or billion to trillion. People simply don’t understand that we are spending way more than our income, and there is no end in sight.

Asking how much a trillion dollars is,
is like asking how many miles long a light-year is.

There may be some people that can give you the right answer, but no-one will know what their answer really means. There is no way for people to grasp the meaning of ‘one trillion dollars’.

I know a trillion dollars is one million, million dollars. But what that really means? Not a clue.

For the “Regular Joe”, it’s already impossible to really grasp how much ‘just’ one million dollars is:

If you make 50,000 a year, one million is twenty years of work! Twenty years! It’s already nearly impossible to fathom that, let alone a trillion dollars.

…Class dismissed