David S. Mazel, on Jennifer Rubin:

All these numbers are truly astounding and, frankly, they are hard to fathom. How can one understand a trillion dollars, not to mention multi-trillions of dollars?

A million is somewhat understandable, after all, many houses cost several hundred thousand, so a million is within a person’s thinking. A billion, though, is a thousand times (not addition) a million. That’s a pretty big number. Now, we talk about trillions; that’s a thousand billions, or a million millions. Those numbers, clearly, are beyond a person’s comprehension. People can talk about them, but who can say they have a intuitive notion of them? No one because no one deals with them in any personal way.

(By the way, a mathematics journal I read notes that mathematicians cannot fathom such numbers either. These sorts of numbers are simply out of our everyday thoughts and lives.)

Why is this important?

Because as we talk about these numbers, we should bear in mind that people listening cannot understand, cannot feel, what these numbers truly represent. I certainly cannot.

So, here’s a proposal: How about if we all start talking not only about trillions, but what, for example, an additional “federal deficit [of] $2.3 trillion more over 10 years” would mean to each of us. In fact, it would behoove everyone if this were done. Then we could debate the costs more intelligently and more viscerally than we do now.

So far, these numbers are too abstract, too distant to mean much. It would be great if we started to say what they mean to us and how they would affect each of us. (Sometimes I miss Ross Perot who, with his charts and tables, explained issues so everyone would understand.)