What’s a “measly” trillion dollars?

After reading your “Suckered by a $3.5 trillion scheme,” I found that credit card debt is approaching $1 trillion, student debt about $1.6 trillion, and US public debt more than $25 trillion.

Wondering what even a “measly” $1 trillion really means I did a little math.

Numerically, a debt of just $1 trillion is $1,000,000,000,000. That’s like borrowing $1.3 million every single day, $54,000 every single hour, or $900 every single minute since the Crucifixion 2,100 years ago (766,700 days ago). If the $1 trillion debt results in just 2% interest for the lenders, add another $20 billion to the 1st year’s cost ($55 million more every single day).

In real life terms, a person would have to work a 40 hour week at $17.50 an hour for 40 years to earn just 1 of those single day $1.3 million debt. The $55 million daily interest alone on a $1 trillion debt would require 42 people to work 40 years.

Borrowing “a measly” $1 trillion plus interest is a whole lot of money that has to be paid back by somebody. And the US has a whole lot more than “a measly” $1 trillion debt. The more trillions we add to the debt, the more our children and their children are going to see less and less in their paychecks. Their life styles and dreams are going to be compromised. They will have to sacrifice and do with a whole lot less.

If so, I hope you won’t mind your adult child’s family living with you and everybody being stressed out. Personally, I’d rather have much less debt and have them visit.

Yes, it would be nice to have a Santa Claus gift us with many needed (and a few less important) gifts. But, eventually, somebody has to “Pay the Piper.”

Stu Smith, West Columbia

What might China do?

I totally agree we are being suckered by a $3.5 trillion debt. Interest has to be paid to buyers of treasury bond notes.

When interest becomes 100% of the budget there will be a revolution.

China is a large holder of our national debt. All it must do is to demand payment.

Kirk Wood, Lexington

More mail trouble

I live in Harbor Heights on Old Chapin Road. We went without mail delivery and pick up for a week. A deliverer finally came about 3 pm, Sept. 7. Other nearby neighborhoods are experiencing the same.

Employees at the regional Red Bank Post Office have stated it is due to covid and employees not at work. My mail did not contain last week’s issue of The Chronicle. No telling what else is not being delivered.

Wind from Washington

Wind and solar will always be a small energy source. Their subsidies are a huge waste of money and eEthanol is a joke. Compressed natural gas vehicle fuel seems to be viable for trucks.

We have centuries of cheap coal, oil and natural gas. If the market is allowed to operate without government interference, those energies seem likely to win.

Jim Clarkson, Columbia