Of Sandwich Cookies and Deficit Dollars

This week, the venerable Oreo cookie celebrated its one hundredth birthday. The delicious little sandwich cookie first burst upon the scene on March 6th, 1912. Just about everyone has heard of Oreos, few people have not eaten them, and the term “Oreo” is synonymous with snacking – albeit not terribly healthy snacking.

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During the course of its one hundred years, the world has consumed five hundred billion Oreos. Now, that’s a lot of cookies by anyone’s standards. A half-trillion of ANYTHING is a vast number. Oreo cookies and McDonald’s hamburgers are two everyday items to which Americans can relate, both of which have sold in the hundreds of billions. The concept of money is something else that Americans are somewhat familiar with. There seems to be an endless barrage of news stories related to government spending. We hear about hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on this and a trillion being spent on that. The problem is that we have become numbed to the point of insensitivity. All but very few Americans can comprehend the concept of a billion dollars – let alone a trillion. Even a million dollars is something that most Americans will never possess and a trillion represents a million millions. The national debt of the United States is rapidly approaching sixteen trillion dollars with no end in sight. In the last three years alone, the president and a complicit Congress have succeeded in racking up an additional five trillion dollars in debt. Which leads us back to Oreos: In one hundred years, a half-trillion Oreo cookies have been sold. This represents one-tenth of the number of dollars of debt that our nation has incurred in just the past three years. So when you read stories about how many Oreo cookies or McDonald’s hamburgers have been sold in the past 50-100 years, keep in mind that these numbers pale in comparison to how quickly your hard-earned tax dollars are being frittered away by your elected officials in Washington.