575 Years of Egg McMuffins and Large Coffees

Perspective. That's what people need a great big dose of nowadays. We hear the massive amount of money the government is spending, but do we understand it's magnitude. Does 4 billion dollars really seem like that much. Bill Gates was able to earn billions in a lifetime as was Steve Jobs. Big businesses earn billions too. So, how much really is a billion dollars....


According to Forbes Magazine, $1 billion will buy you and 2,000 other friends an egg mcmuffin and a large coffee every day for the next 575 years (give or take a few days due to inflation). The U.S. is spending 4 times that ( egg mucmuffins for me and all my friends for 2,300 years - talk about your cholesterol!) per day. So maybe 4 billion dollars is a little more than you thought. 

However, the national debt continues to grow. The total U.S debt is now more than 15.5 trillion dollars. Let me reinforce that TRILLION. Imagine the amount of egg mcmuffins you can buy! It is almost, no wait, it is ridiculous. There are only about 350 million people living throughout the United States. So even if every person paid 1 million dollars for the next 50 years, it wouldn't be enough to cover a fraction of our debt!

As the debt keeps rising, my generation (Generation Y/Millenium) and every generation after us is going to be faced with the repercussions. So it astounds me that people my age don't seem to realize the sticky situation we are getting in to. The baby boomers don't care what happens to us - they lived their fun free-love lives and are now retired with a secure social security check. Generation X - our parent's generation - are too small to make a dent in politics. So, it's really left to us the next largest generation to take them on. 

Us Millenium babes need to stand up and tell the government, STOP SPENDING ALREADY! We are the ones who are going to have to pay massive amounts of money in taxes and never see the return, especially when it comes to social security. 

We must start paying attention and forcing our political leaders to pay attention as well. Our representatives in both the Senate and the House of Reps need to revamp the budget and cut excess costs. It will take time to get this debt down and the longer we wait the worse it will become. We must act. Otherwise, at the rate we're going, my generation will be working until were 80 in an attempt to keep money in our treasury. 


Plus, where is this $ billion dollars a day being spent? Looking around, it doesn't seem to have helped the economy.