That'll Be 43 Trillion Dollars, Please

Via ThoughtCrimes.org, a link to a U.S. News & World Report article, The case of the 12 zeros. From which we get an idea of just how completely Bush & Co. are selling the U.S. not just down the river, but down through the ages.

The Bush administration and the Republican Party seem to have lost all capacity for financial self-control, turning their backs on the GOP's historical record of responsible fiscal management. The Republicans have squandered the huge budget surplus they inherited by spending not just on guns and butter but on guns, butter, and tax cuts. Because of government obfuscation, most Americans don't realize the deep fiscal hole we're in--and the fact that we're still busy digging. As David Walker, the head of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, pointed out, "The federal government's obligations, current liabilities, and unfunded fiscal commitments are over $43 trillion and rising. . . . Yes, that's trillions with 12 zeros rather than billions with nine zeros."

Now that's a big number, right there. It looks like this: $43,000,000,000,000. That's a lot of money. Allow me to help you understand it:

• That's enough money to go to Starbucks and buy more than 12 trillion (12,044,817,927,170, to be exact) grande chai tea lattes, and still have $3.10 left over
  
• It's enough to buy 979 billion cases of toilet paper (979,498,861,047 to be exact, and 48 rolls per case - I'll let you do that math). Not the cheap shit, either: two-ply.
  
• That's enough money to divide among 924 of your best friends, and every one of them would be richer than Bill Gates
  
• If you could buy countries for their GDP, you could buy 271 Finlands, four Nicaraguas and two Guadaloupes, and still have a couple billion left over for refreshments (or toilet paper)
  
• In the movie Animal House, if Flounder had said, "May I have 43 trillion marbles, please?" in that cute, sheepish way that he said, "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?", it would have been 4.3 billion times funnier
  
• If you could count a dollar per second, it would take you more than a million years (1,362,587 years, plus an extra 283 days, to be exact) just to count it. And that's without bathroom breaks. Or, maybe you can carry some singles into the bathroom with you.
  
• Okay, that last one wasn't realistic. You'd surely count it all as hundreds, which would be a big timesaver: it would then take less than 13,626 years. And you'd end in November, so on that thirteen thousandth, six hundred twenty-sixth year, you could have Thanksgiving and Christmas off. Lucky!