A Tip

On how to personalize and understand government spending increases.

A trillion dollars is about the total amount collected in income taxes by the U.S. federal government in fiscal year 2006-- $1.04 trillion, if you're curious to use the exact number. That gives me a simple rule of thumb for personalizing these numbers. If I want to know what an additional trillion dollars in government borrowing or spending will mean for me, I just imagine what it would be like to pay twice as much in federal income taxes for one year.

The stimulus+the bailouts must exceed a trillion. Therefore, we if we were to pay for it today, everyone would pay double in taxes. But since we aren't, that amount is collecting interest. It's basically like the whole country just took out a student loan the size of their tax payment.