In the language of the
Pirahã tribe of Brazil there are only words for the numbers one and two. There are no words for any larger numbers. As a result, when they count, they have to say "one, two, many."
The rest of us are constantly bombarded with large numbers on a daily basis, but we all still reach a point at which we just think "many." Most people have little idea how much a billion is much less a trillion.
I get the feeling that every time a politician says 'we have a $8.4 trillion dollar debt' or 'we spent $100 billion', all most people really hear is, 'we have "a large" deficit' and 'we spent "a jillion" dollars.' Without the proper knowledge to put these large numbers into a context we can understand, the numbers are utterly meaningless and productive debate is impossible. Of course, republican politicians have learned how to use this to their advantage.
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During every election cycle, all the candidates throw out a lot of numbers and they all sound very convincing. It doesn't matter that one side is giving accurate compelling arguments and the other side is making everything up. Even the media end up throwing up their hands and decide it is too complicated to figure out who is telling the truth. As a result, many people end up voting for the candidate that they would like to drink a beer with.
Last year, George Bush went on a 60 city tour to convince people that we were facing an epic crisis because Social Security was projected to run a $3.7 trillion deficit over the next 75 years. But then quietly and without any fanfare, Republicans tried to permanently repeal the estate tax and add almost $1 trillion dollars to the national debt over just 10 years. I'm convinced that the only thing keeping republicans from being tarred and feathered for their hypocrisy is the public's poor math skills.
Several years ago I realized that I was unable to objectively evaluate many political proposals because I didn't have the proper context to understand the numbers involved. Here are a few ways to understand large numbers that I found useful.
How much is $1 trillion? If you spent a dollar a second, it would take about 11.5 days to spend a million dollars, 31.7 years to spend a billion dollars, and over 317 centuries to spend a trillion dollars. There are roughly 300 million people in the U.S., so every $1 trillion is about $3,333 per person.
I also made a point of memorizing a few relevant numbers to put the ones thrown around every day into context. If you have large number phobia, just remember these and you will be much more effective in countering republican talking points.
1) U.S. GDP in 2005: $12.3 trillion
2) U.S National Debt: 8.4 trillion ($28,000 per person)
3) FY2006 Federal Budget: $2.7 Trillion ($9,000 per person)
4) FY2006 Budget Deficit: $296 billion (Not including borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund)
5) FY2006 Military Budget: $535 billion
6) Median Family Income for a family of four in 2003: $65,000
7) Amount you make working all year for minimum wage: $10,712
Another way of putting numbers in context is determining what else we could have spent the money on. The National Priorities Project does a great job of providing this information. For instance with the money we have spent on Iraq so far ($315 billion), we could have provided health care to 71,717,012 people, hired 5,472,330 elementary school teachers, or built 2,843,180 affordable housing units. The total cost of Iraq is estimated to be $1-2 trillion. If people understood how much money that is, they would be truly outraged.
Our democracy depends on an informed electorate, but as the issues get more complex, and politicians become adept at the marketing tools and PR, it becomes more and more difficult to know what to believe. Putting large numbers in context will help.