A U.S. debt clock was on prominent display throughout this year’s GOP convention. While mildly entertaining, watching the numbers change isn’t really all that helpful in understanding just how big is it?
Some say mounting national debt has made “trillion the new billion.” Perhaps. But there’s no getting around the fact that incomprehensibly large numbers are tough to grasp, let alone visualize – for elected officials and voters alike. Big numbers can be both confusing and intimidating, which may explain the growing popularity of euphemisms such as “gazillion” to express unfathomably ginormous numbers.
There are a number of helpful infographics available online. This one from Demonocracy.info does a great job of graphically illustrating the size of one million, one billion and one trillion. It also illustrates the current size of the national debt ceiling of $16.394 trillion and <OBSCENE CONTENT ALERT> the staggering $122.1 trillion in the nation’s unfunded liabilities.
Closer to home, references such as this and this can help put state and local government budgets into perspective – particularly those pesky unfunded liabilities for pension and retiree health plans that run into the millions.
And if you want to understand the differences between Europe and the U.K./U.S. in terms of how they express large numbers (who knew?), check out this simple, straightforward explanation from two adorable British geeks from How-To Geek.com. Cheerio, mate!