The word trillion has been bandied about quite a bit lately with regards to the US deficit, so I’ve been thinking of what a trillion dollars is.

$1,000,000,000,000

As you can see it’s a very large sum of money. It used to be that big money was always referred to in millions, but now it’s possible someone could feasibly be a millionaire by the time they retire just by managing their money. A million dollars just doesn’t go as far as it used to. People pay that to buy a house nowadays in some markets, so it doesn’t really go as far as it used to. Being a billionaire is obviously quite the next step up and has become the gold standard for being rich nowadays. But even Bill Gates with his $50 billion fortune pales in comparison to the sum of a trillion. $50 billion is only 5% of a trillion, so you can see how nearly unfathomable a sum it really is.

Well why I bring this is Corina and I have had a conversation on 2 separate occasions about what in fact you could buy with a trillion dollars. I’ve stated that I think you could buy one of those poor countries like Rwanda for less then a trillion dollars, which Corina disagrees with me. This is a country with $10 billion in Gross Domestic Product a year. I think I could pay off every man, woman and child and buy every square foot of Rwanda for less then a trillion dollars.

So, I ask this question. What do you feel is the largest thing you could buy with a trillion dollars? Could you buy Lake Superior? The state of Wisconsin? The International Space Station? The Pyramids? The UN? Michael Jordan?

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