Now that everyone is thinking in trillions, here are some numbers to put $1T in context.
One trillion dollars would fund roughly:
50 days of the U.S. federal government
1 year of U.S. federal interest payments on the national debt
90 days of Chinese government spending
5 months of German government spending
6 months of French government spending
And that is under heroic assumptions: that the wealth could be taxed, sold, or transferred without crashing the value.
In fact, if the wealth of the 10 richest Americans were converted into U.S. government spending, it would last about 152 days.
If the wealth of the top 100 billionaires on Forbes were confiscated and converted into government spending, it would fund the U.S. federal government for only a bit more than one year.
And then it would be gone.
The US federal government already spends about 7 trillion a year, states and local governments spend a combined 3 to 4 trillion more.
So don’t be naive. The world’s problems recur, but fortunes are a one-time thing. If someone tells you that the next trillion will solve the problems that were unsolved by the first ten, then they either didn’t do the math, or have a different goal in mind.