"Honest Mistakes"?

Friday morning, September 26, 2008 [a bit overcast and a cool 600],
In yesterday's perspective, I inadvertently placed the national debt at $9 billion—just an honest mistake—instead of the $9 TRILLION (or $10, or $11) that it actually is. It was this morning before I realized what I had done, and when I did, I almost let it go, thinking it really didn't matter, as my point was clearly made.
The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized that I was thinking exactly like most of the politicians who are meeting in Washington attempting to "fix" our problem and, thereby, to avoid a financial disaster, like, say, another Great Depression.
Please allow me to explain just how "insignificant" my "honest mistake" is: The words “million,” “billion,” and “trillion” look and sound pretty much the same; however, if you stacked up thousand-dollar bills to reach one million, it would reach four inches high; one billion thousand-dollar bills stacked up is around 333 feet high; one trillion is about 63 MILES high. As you can see, the difference between a billion and a trillion is hardly noticeable. Yea, right!
If you cannot relate to that example, try this one on for size: A million seconds is 12 days; a billion seconds is 32 years; a trillion seconds is almost 32 decades (31,688 years). Reread that, so you get it clearly fixed in your mind. This means that 9 billion seconds is 288 years (32 x 9); whereas, 9 trillion seconds is a mere 285,192 years (31,688 x 9). As you can see, my "honest mistake" was off by ONLY by 284,904 years! Now, let us put this in more practical terms: Assume that the national debt is only $9 trillion, rather than 10 or 11 trillion. This means that my "honest mistake" was off only by $8,991,000,000,000 (that's 8 trillion, 991 billion dollars!). With that, try this on for size: Let us assume that your annual income is $85,000. This means that should you have to pay off this debt and you used your entire annual income to do just that, it would take you only 105,882,353 years (that is 105 million, 882 thousand, 352 years!)! However, if you chose to pay it off at the rate of $1 per second, it would take you only 285,192 years! What a bargain!
I think you see, these "honest mistakes" that our leaders often make can be very costly, so much so that, well I think you can see where greed will take us.
Gosh, I hope I haven't made another "honest mistake" in my calculations! If I have forgive me because it really was an honest mistake. These numbers are much too huge for my feeble mind.
One more thing: the national debt is increasing faster than a speeding bullet, so be sure to keep your facts up-to-date; otherwise, you might get in over your head and not live long enough to pay off your share of this ever-increasing debt and I would HATE for that to happen!
I just thought I would remind you—