National Debt

Go here: US National Debt Clock

As of this writing, the national debt is almost $9.4 trillion dollars. The population of the US is currently slightly over 300 million people. That means the personal share for every man, woman, and child in the US is about $31,000.

Now, children (people under the age of 18) make up 24.5% of the US population. That means there are about 228 million adults in the US. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the total US labor force is 146 million people. That means that the share of the debt for every working person in the US is: $64,239.

The median income in the US is about $25,100 (for all people 18+).

Now... how do we get rid of all this debt? Clearly having national debt that is more than twice the national average income means that we can't pay this off anytime soon.

With a yearly deficit of about $530 billion (give or take $10-20 billion depending on year), a dummy calculation means that we'd have to immediately cut spending or raise taxes by $3,630 per year per member of the workforce. THAT'S BEFORE WE START PAYING ANYTHING DOWN!!!

What does this mean for you?! Approximately $406 billion was spent in FY07 by the federal government to pay off the interest of the debt. That's $2,780 of YOUR money that isn't going to government programs, education, military spending, etc. A lot of that money is going to foreign countries that loaned us the money in the first place. Isn't it nice of us to help build roads and fund schools in China and Japan (they hold most of the foreign held debt of the US).

While it is very appealing to ask government to lower taxes, the more we increase the national debt, the less of our taxes will be going to fund our government. More and more we will be paying interest instead of funding programs. Asking for lower taxes is the adult equivalent of a elementary school kid asking his teacher for more recess -- while more recess is better for him now, he will suffer later for the lack of education -- similarly, we will all suffer in the future for our lack of financial common sense now.