How much is a trillion?

Congress passed a $787 billion stimulus package. The news media are calling it "almost a trillion", a number that will surely be passed by as interest rates are accrued to the amount.

Bypass, for the moment, the fact that the national debt, at 65.5 trillion dollars, now exceeds the Gross Domestic Product of the Entire World. Let's just think about the roughly trillion dollars.

Trillion ...Billion ... Million ... these are just big numbers. Infathomably large. And they sound the same. They rhyme. So it's hard to comprehend just how much money we're talking about.

But we all know what a second is. Go ahead, snap your fingers about a second apart. That was a second.

How long is a million seconds? A million seconds ago was about 12 days ago. 11.574 days ago to be exact. Saturday, February 7, 2009 was a million seconds ago.

How long is a billion seconds? A Billion seconds ago was June 12, 1977. Were you born yet? That was more than half my lifetime ago. Jimmy Carter was President. Barack Obama was in High School. A Billion (32 years) is quite a lot more than a million (11.5 days).

How long is a trillion seconds? Fasten your seatbelt. It's not World War 1 or the Civil War or the Declaration of Independence. It's not the reformation or the birth of Christ or the Exodus.

A Trillion seconds ago was 31,688 years ago. There is no archaeological evidence of humans standing upright that far back.

And that's how long it would take the US to pay for the stimulus bill, if we paid a dollar a second (or $31.536 million a year). And that's if we borrow the money at 0% interest...