美国债务上限究竟何去何从？(1/2)

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概述：1917年美国的债务上限为110亿美元，而如今已高达16.4万亿美元。万亿究竟是怎样一个概念？
Hints:
Congress
Richard Rahn
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PS：1-10写英文，11-10,000写数字，100,000及以上的数字按照听到的单词写，句首不用数字，比如 A hundred 。本文统一写dollars，不用$符号。
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口语节目地址：http://bulo.hujiang.com/menu/11921/item/704707/It's not some architectural feature unique to Washington. The debt ceiling is a borrowing limit passed by Congress in 1917 to fund the war effort. Back then, the ceiling was just over 11 billion dollars.
Economist Richard Rahn says the idea was to enforce discipline on government spending.
"It's really redundant when you have a budget, but ironically it has turned out to be somewhat useful because it forces a debate occasionally about how much we're spending and how we're spending."
Until recently, Congress routinely approved higher limits. But that changed in 2011 when a Republican-led Congress stalled on extending the ceiling, resulting in the first ratings downgrade of U.S. debt.
Today the ceiling is 16.4 trillion, a limit the U.S. is likely to exceed by February.
"I think it's beyond the human mind to be able to grasp numbers that big."
Just how big is the U.S. debt? It's easier to visualize if we start with 100 dollars. A hundred of these makes 10,000.
If we multiply that 10,000 by 100, now you have a million dollars, enough to fit in a shopping bag. A hundred million looks more impressive, shown here on top of a shipping pallet. Make that ten pallets and you have a billion.
But now it gets interesting.
Multiply these ten pallets 1,000 times and you have a trillion, one followed by 12 zeros. That's enough money to cover an entire soccer field two pallets high.这不是美国独有的结构特征。债务最高限额是一种借款限额，1917年由美国国会立法通过，来为一战提供资金。那时候，限额仅为110亿美元多一点。
经济学家理查德.拉恩表示，这一想法旨在加强对政府花费的限制。“拥有预算确实是累赘，但是讽刺的是，在某种程度上，预算是有用的，因为它偶尔会促成关于我们正在花多少钱和怎么花的争论。
直到最近，国会才例行公事地同意提高上限。但是2011年却不是这样。当时由共和党领导的国会延迟提高上限，最终导致美国债务等级首次遭到降级。
现在最高限额为16.4万亿美元，美国可能在2月份超过这一限额。
“我想，这么大的数字已经超出了人类所能理解的范畴。”
只是，美国的债务有多大呢？让我们从最简单的100美元开始进行假设，100个100美元即1万元。如果我们将1万美元乘以100，现在就有100万美元了，这足够装满你的购物袋。如果把1亿美元放到一个货轮托盘上，那看上去就会更让人印象深刻。有10个这样的托盘，你就有10亿了。
但是现在有意思的是，将10个托盘乘以1000，然后你就有1万亿了。1万亿就是数字后面跟着12个零。这些钱足以覆盖整个足球场，且有两个托盘那么高。