$16,400,000,000,000.00 – That’s what the US National Debt looks like if you write it out in actual numeric dollar form. I had to take pause to even figure out how many zeros and commas it even needed.
When they mention it on the news headlines they usually write it as $16.4 Trillion because that is easier to fit in text and also it doesn’t make people instantly crap their pants. And you still can’t really wrap your head around it, can you? Well, I was playing with it a little bit to see if I could put it into terms of reality that people like myself can come to terms with.
If you divide $16.4 Trillion by 300 Million (the rough population of the US) you get about $54,000.00 per person. Now, mind you that’s using ALL people (infants, elderly, handicapped, incarcerated, etc.), so that’s kind of a stupid figure to even use, but if we just wanted to make a head charge right now to make this thing go away, that’s what it would be.
So, let’s say about half of our population is working age (150 Million), but now we also have to figure unemployment. I’m going to use the U6 Umemployment figure for the US (this means that people that have stopped “actively trying” to find work and those that are picking up marginal part time gigs to sort of scrape by are also counted). So, we got about 127 Million of us in the arena now.
How much is the per-head cost now? $129,000.00 EACH. I’m not even “struggling” financially, but I certainly don’t have that lying around. That will buy you a decent house in many parts of America.
Of that 127 Million, how many are at or near the poverty line? Who is barely squeeking by? Who’s heading into foreclosure because they made poor decisions or were a “victim” of the housing crisis?
Who’s going to pay this?
No one. That’s who. It’s unpayable. We are unable to pay our debt now and we are unable to pay it EVER. So what do we do? Well, we do what we always do. We take responsible actions in Washington and RAISE THE DEBT CEILING. This means that we say, “We can’t pay our bills, so let’s borrow some more money which we can’t pay back.” You know that guy that has $20K in credit card bills so he takes out another credit card . . .
Our ratings a year or two back on some government bonds and stuff dropped from an A to an A minus. I’m honestly amazed that we even have that. Our credit rating as a nation should be F minus minus.
This is NOT an attack on any political party as I don’t think it is a Republican or Democrat problem. It’s just an idiot problem.
Pretty soon the dollar is going to be worth about 1 cent. So, I’m not sure how we’re going to pay that debt ourselves when a loaf of bread will soon cost $4000 dollars.
Basically, we’re all going to collapse into oblivion.
The end.
PS: The federal prime interest rate right now is 3.25% (don’t ask me what that means, by the way). So, if that debt is being charged interest by our lenders at even this low nominal percentage, what is the ANNUAL and DAILY INTEREST ACCUMULATED?
Yearly interest = $533 Billion
Daily interest = $1.46 Billion