Brother, can you spare $5.3 trillion?
“A government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that, as a government grows, liberty decreases.”
— Thomas Jefferson
“It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.”
— P.J. O’Rourke
By Stephan Drew
We Americans are known for our charity. As far back as anyone can remember, we have helped those around the world when they are in need. Not only is this a good thing to do, it is part of our character. We have always been the most giving country in all the world. We are also a very wasteful country. We eat far too much (I know I do) and we throw away more food in one day than the citizens of most Third World countries ever see in a whole year. Even in our monetary affairs, we are profligate. We don’t mind spending exorbitant amounts for what we want. But, as much as we American citizens lavish on ourselves, it is nothing compared to the amount that our government squanders. We hear the words “billions” and “trillions” on the nightly news, as if they are ordinary amounts that all of us comprehend and use frequently in our daily life. Take, for instance, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the Brookings Institute and USA TODAY, the 20-year war in Afghanistan cost U.S. taxpayers $2.5 trillion (that’s $2,500,000,000,000) and the war in Iraq cost us $2.8 trillion ($2,800,000,000,000). Together, that is $5.3 trillion. Since the politicians and news anchors toss these numbers around so casually, I decided to do a little research and was truly shocked at what I discovered. For a moment, let’s just think about what that much money looks like. If you stacked up 5 trillion $1 bills, that pile would reach from the Earth to the moon and beyond it. If you decided to waste that amount, you could spend over $54 million per day for 50 years and you would still have enough for your grandchildren to live a comfortable life after you’re gone.
According to the Kiplinger Newsletter, for $5.3 trillion ($5,300,000,000,000), you could:
• Buy all of the sports leagues combined (NFL, NBA, NHL, NASCAR, MLB, etc.), four times over.
• Purchase the Apple Company five times over. Or you could buy iPhones for every person on Earth.
• Give a $40,000 car to 132.5 million people, or, an $80,000 car to 66.25 million people.
• Send over 44 million students to a $30,000/year college for four years.
• Pay off about 20 percent of our national debt.
• Give every person (from the oldest adult to the youngest child) in the United States over $16,000.
• Feed, clothe and house every homeless person in America and give them each a check for $9,000,000 (it is estimated that there are 553,000 homeless in this country).
• Pave 833,000 miles ($6 million per mile) of 4-lane highway in rural areas or pave 530,000 miles ($10 million per mile) of 4-lane highway in urban areas.
• Build 19,500 airports (each costing $350 million).
• Build a $200,000 home for 26,500,000 people.
• Lay 2,650,000 miles of railway (each mile costing $2 million).
• Build 1,325,000 bus terminals (each costing $4 million).
• Buy 5.3 trillion $1 chocolate bars.
• Pay 18 million new teachers for five years.
• Pay Lebron James $20 million per year for the next 265,000 years.
• Pay all 535 members of Congress (combined) for the next 56,000 years.
• Pay one person $31 billion per year for life.
• Put it in a bank CD (at only 1.29 percent) and draw $64.5 billion in interest per year.
• Hire 284 million U.S. Army privates.
• Hire over 83 million new nurses.
• Hire over 83 million new police.
• Hire over 83 million EMTs.
• Pay the total average household income ($67,500) for over 78 million families.
• Buy 23,000 Boeing 747s (about 40 times the amount of 747s in service today). Or, you could just buy the Boeing Corporation 20 times over.
• Buy a year’s worth of groceries for nearly 590 million four-person households.
• Pay all the monthly bills (groceries, utilities, insurance, etc.) for over 88 million households for one year.
Yes, I was completely shocked when I found out what $5.3 trillion could buy. Tens of millions could have received a full four-year college education. All the families in America could have eaten better and had more household income. We could have paid our military personnel, teachers, police and first responders what they truly deserve. However, we were told it was “necessary” to spend it on war, while hundreds of thousands of Americans went homeless and hungry, and could have easily been housed and fed. This is gluttonous misuse and our government is very good at it. They are known for squandering vast amounts of money on a colossal scale. And they do it so casually. The words “billion” and “trillion” are everyday phrases to them. They don’t have to worry if they waste a lot of it. They can always get more … from YOU and ME. They’ll say they need it because they’re “working for you.” Or they’ll use that old faithful line, “This is going to help EVERYONE in the long run.” My favorite, though, is when they say, “If we only had more money, it would fix these problems.” It seldom does but, it’s nice to dream, isn’t it? Unfortunately, those past dreams have turned into our current nightmare. We have more debt than we’ve ever had in our history. Prices have skyrocketed and we have no reserve to help carry us through these rough times. What we’re spending now is money that was printed for us and, quite honestly, has little or no value. We can see that in our current prices. It takes twice as much money to buy what we were able to afford last year for half the price. We truly need to get our fiscal house in order. Most companies, when they find they’ve wasted a great deal of money, will freeze all new spending until they get to the bottom of the problem. Our government doesn’t work like that. In the last two years, we have allocated more money than ever before. Much of these funds haven’t even been distributed yet. Yet we see them in Washington now, voting to spend trillions more. While we have sent billions and trillions outside this country, our own infrastructure is crumbling beneath us. But, there will be more spending and more waste. You can count on that. I don’t know how you feel about it but it sickens me to my stomach. When will they learn? And when will we? When will we stop sending these big spenders (wasters) to Washington? Since we haven’t yet learned, I suppose the old phrase is true: “You get exactly what you deserve.” Let’s hope we all change our ways and deserve better in the future. We have wasted far too much already. So, the next time you hear a politician ask for billions or trillions, remember just how much money that is and what other things we could be doing with it.
