Putting the national debt in perspective

Last year, about this time, I wrote a column about putting things in perspective and understanding the national debt.

In August 2024, the number that was the focus of my writing was 35 trillion. But, alas, a year has passed, and a new number has taken its place.

It is time to update my perspective: 36.2 trillion seconds is about 1.15 million years. If you started counting at the dawn of the Stone Age, you would still be counting.

It takes 1,200 pounds to make one big round bale of hay, so 36.2 trillion pounds would produce approximately 30.17 million large round bales — enough to stack a hay wall from coast to coast and several stories high.

The average distance from Earth to the sun is 93 million miles. At 36.2 trillion miles, you could travel between Earth and the sun 388 times round trip.

Stacked in $100 bills, $36.2 trillion would form a tower about 2.28 million miles high — more than nine times the distance to the moon.

With a global population of 8 billion, 36.2 trillion people would be 4,525 times today’s population. At 2,000 calories a day, 36.2 trillion people would need 72.4 trillion calories a day — about 414 million times today’s global food output.

And 36.2 trillion pennies would weigh about 199.1 billion pounds and completely fill more than 138,000 standard 53-foot semitrailers. That is a convoy of trucks stretching coast to coast and back, several times.

Counting to 36.2 trillion at one number per second would take over 1.15 million years.

The United States uses about 410 billion gallons of water per day. So, 36.2 trillion gallons would supply the country for about 88 years.

Globally, we use 1.1 trillion gallons of water annually. So, 36.2 trillion gallons would cover 33 years of global usage.

Also, 36.2 trillion eggs would produce 72.4 trillion halves — enough to fill 2.41 million acre-feet, which could cover the entire state of Rhode Island, or 1,034 square miles, in more than 3.7 feet of deviled eggs.

Spending $1 million per day, it would take over 99,000 years to spend $36.2 trillion. Divided evenly among 8 billion people, $36.2 trillion would give each person about $4,525.

Imagine for a moment that you wanted to grow 36.2 trillion bushels of corn. To figure out how much land you would need, we start with the average U.S. corn yield, which is about 177 bushels per acre according to recent U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

You’d need around 204.5 billion acres of farmland to grow that much corn. The total land area of the entire United States is about 2.3 billion acres.

You’d need 89 times that. In other words, you could plant corn across every square foot of the United States — from Alaska to Florida, from city parks to deserts — and you would still be barely scratching the surface.

The entire surface of the Earth, land and water combined, is about 37.7 billion acres. You would need more than five Earths’ worth of land just to plant your dream cornfield.

As of June 2025, the U.S. national debt stands at $36.2 trillion — the total amount borrowed to cover government expenses over time.