This week Congress approved President Obama’s $3.5 TRILLION budget. So we wanted to know how many Americans grasp just how big a trillion really is. In order to do so, we took a poll of 1,001 Americans asking “How many times larger is a trillion than a million?” We also took our Econ4U team out in front of the White House to capture some live responses. How did people fare? Take a look at this video: (my favorite is the father who chastises his daughter and then gets it wrong himself!)
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/4428480[/vimeo]
The poll respondents did a little better, if only because they were offered 5 choices. 21% got the question right. The answers were distributed in a manner that is about equal to what you’d expect from random guessing. Until Americans improve their financial education, the public won’t be able to comprehend these enormous budget issues that have so much impact on their lives.
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Haha, that father made me laugh. He went alpha-math professor on his daughter with the “it’s still in base 10″ argument, only to follow it up with his own einstein-esque calculation.
Introducing the kiloDirksen, in honor of the late Senator Everett Dirksen: “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
Permalink: http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2009/05/introducing-the-kilodirksen/
there are one billion thousands in a trillion.
why do you not tell me the answer?
i have made comments twice before but you do not tell me if i am right or not.
there are 1,000 millions in a billion. then there 1,000 multiply 1,000 equals a trillion. 1,000 millions equal a billion. 1,000,000 millions equal a trillion.
Financial education has nothing to do with understanding the size of a trillion. It is a number and has everything to do with proper math education. To understand that there is 1000 millions in a billion is probably too difficult for many Americans. In fact, after teaching mathematics at a university I would venture to say that it is even too much to ask that they understand that there is a 1000 1000′s in a million.
Actually, 21% in a poll with 5 possible choices is not any better, because if everyone just answered at random, it would have been the same (20% chance for each answer to be picked)
Answer: Taxation is theft.
…Class dismissed
I think this is an exercise in futility.
Asking how much a trillion dollars is,
is like asking how many miles long a light-year is.
There may be some people that can give you the right answer, but no-one will know what their answer really means. There is no way for people to grasp the meaning of ‘one trillion dollars’.
I know a trillion dollars is one million, million dollars. But what that really means? Not a clue.
For the “Regular Joe”, it’s already impossible to really grasp how much ‘just’ one million dollars is:
If you make 50,000 a year, one million is twenty years of work! Twenty years! It’s already nearly impossible to fathom that, let alone a trillion dollars.
one trillion= if you spent a million a day since christ was born it would take you over the year 2700 AD…..If you was to spent a dollar a min. it would take you over 200,000 years to get to a trillion.
When even conservatives talk about spending our kids kids money they have no idea that they are looking much farther than that. people this is laid out to where it is never paid back
Upon reflection, this is stupid. (Full disclosure: I would have gotten it wrong. I was off by a zero; my quick reaction was to simply think of how many extra zeros you need to tack on.)
This is factoid punidtry. If you know that it takes 1,000 billion to make a trillion, you have the right idea. And if you know it takes 1,000 million to make a billion, you are there.
But this is pointless, since dollar values are essentially arbitrary. If we say $1,000 dollars is now tradeable for a new US Dollar, our deficits are back in the billions, and we don’t have to worry about using the T for a while. Problem solved! Since now everyone can easily remember that billions come after millions!
That is why what matters is the measure of the nation’s deficit/debt relative to the nation’s GDP. That is a measure not arbitrary and subject to big scary zeros fippancy.
My guess, though, is that less than 5% of Americans can tell you what in the word “GDP” stands for. And fewer still could tell you what the ratio is between GDP and the deficit and/or debt. (1%? Maybe?)
That last paragraph is why we are screwed, not that people are not conversant in converting million or billion to trillion. People simply don’t understand that we are spending way more than our income, and there is no end in sight.
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