Debt to the Moon: the National Debt in perspective

The following letter was published in the Hudson Star Observer on April 1, 2018.

A trillion, billion, or even a million dollars. What do these have in common? What do you think of when you hear such numbers? For most, they become abstract numbers, yet they are familiar numbers heard every day listening to the news.

So what do they have in common? The answer is government.

The federal budget is estimated to take in $3.37 trillion for 2018, yet spend $3.76 trillion for a deficit of  $392 billion. The national debt is already at $21 trillion and growing and that does not include the $123 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

Let’s quantify these numbers by way of physical measurement to better understand how we stack-up, fiscally speaking. Let’s start by defining our tool of measurement, a single one-dollar bill. In order to clean up the decimals we will round up or down to make things simpler.

• A dollar bill is 0.0043 inches thick and a one-inch thick pile is $233.
• One foot is equal to $2,790.
• One mile is 5280 feet, so our stack of dollars becomes $14,734,884.

So far, so good, but we are not done yet. The average distance from the earth to the moon is 238,857 miles.

• In order to reach the moon, we will need a stack of 3.5 trillion dollars.
• At our current debt, we could go from the earth to the moon just under six times (5.97 times to be more precise).

To help put this into better context, the median household income is $55,322. That is equivalent to a 20-foot stack of single dollar bills. However, we can do better than that.

• Every individual would be accountable for $64,252, or a 23-foot stack.
• Every taxpayer would owe $173,548, equaling a stack of 62 feet.

In case you were wondering, our $123 trillion in unfunded liabilities would be a mind-boggling 8,347,538 miles high. Hopefully this exercise will add perspective to our fiscal health and leave you with the idea that this is unsustainable.

We, as individuals, did not spend this money. Our government spent it. It is up to us to say enough and enact a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution through a Convention of States, where We the People take back our government.