Can You Say "Trillion?"

Bear with me for a few moments as I share with you a thought that came to me while seeing a national debt chart click away faster than my eyes could see the numbers, climbing higher each second as the debt clock added $3 million dollars a minute. There was a time when the debt was in the hundreds of millions then hundreds of billions, which for a person such as me who is a math flunky, has difficulty even writing down numbers that reach into the billions.

                Over the past four years, the national debt has added about 5 trillion additional dollars. One trillion is the number 1 with 12 zeros behind it. It is impossible, and I did say impossible, for a person to actually comprehend how much 15 trillion dollars actually is because in daily life we use one, five, ten, fifty and a hundred. We speak of thousands or tens of thousands and millions.  However trillion is so far out there, our mind actually blanks out as we have nothing to compare it to to compare it to.

                Here is one example, the tallest mountain on earth is Mount Everest and is just over 29,000 feet in elevation. If you were to stack 15 trillion dollars in a stack, then Mount Everest is only 81 million dollars in height. This is the amount the U.S. government spends every eleven minutes.  In order to make 15 trillion dollars stack up, it would require 185 thousand stacks the height of Mount Everest, which means the stack of dollars would begin at the porch of the White House and go past the moon!

                Here is another example.  There are 86,400 seconds in each day. If we repaid the debt, one dollar every second of every day for 80 years, you will only have repaid $2.5 billion.  Here is the point.  It is now impossible to repay the national debt, even if we tax every person in America at a high rate, we could raise trillions in one year, but there would have been more debt acquired that year, thus it would actually only cancel out.

                I believe the American people are in denial of the crisis before us because the debt has gone so far beyond what we can actually comprehend.  Yet, some in the government still have a desire to take money and throw it at failing programs and persons who abuse the system.

                Somewhere and at some time in the future, there will be a major crisis that can lead to a transition in the entire nation. If at the VOE, I spend more than I bring into the ministry, I would need to cut back on expenses, lay off workers, or bring in additional income. The answer for many is to raise taxes from anyone who has money, but the people are now tax weary and some of the wealthiest are giving up their U.S citizenships, moving to nations with better tax breaks or to offshore accounts to avoid taxes. 

                The good news is that God is faithful to His covenant family on earth and will supply all our needs according to His riches in Glory! I suggest each person become as independent as possible from any form of government assistance. Become as debt free as possible and join with people of like faith to undergird one another in the days ahead.

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