6 Not-so-Fun Facts about American Debt

Posted by MoneyThinker in debt | 0 comments

Remember back in August, when the United States was in risk of going into default and the big thing to talk about was the debt mess that everyone in the country, including the government, was in? Well, today we’re going to look at that a little bit more, but from more of a fun angle… or maybe it’s not so fun, depending on how you look at it. So today, we’re going to look at six of those fun facts about the American Debt mess.

1. The debt ceiling has been raised 6 times since 2006. Six. That means that they’ve had to raise it two times in one calendar year more than once. I don’t know about you, but I would think there’s a problem after the second time they had to raise it in such a short period of time.
2. Part of the reason for the new debt ceiling hike was because the U.S Federal Government issued almost as much new debt in 2010 as almost every government in the world… combined. Some countries didn’t even have 1% of the debt that the United States had! Once again, I believe there’s a bit of a problem there, how about you?
3. The biggest reason that we’ve had to raise the ceiling 6 times in 5 years? The debt is now over 14 times more than when Ronald Reagan took office 20 years ago. That’s an average of 70 billion dollars a year.
4. If every American citizen were required to pay “their portion” of the debt, almost everyone in the United States would fall below the poverty line; where it stands now, we’d all have to pay around $50,000. Around 50% of Americans make $46,000 a year or less. In short, we’d all be in really big trouble.
5. Approximately 50% of the government budget is borrowed, which adds to the national debt even more… to the tune of 5 billion dollars… daily.
6. Finally, have you ever thought about spending 14 trillion dollars? Yeah, I don’t know what you’d spend it on either. Let me put it in perspective for you. If you spent 10 dollars a day, you’d have to be alive for over 30,000 years in order to spend it all. The government did it in 200 years… yes, I’m aware they’re spending more than $10 a person a day, but it’s still impressive, right?

So there you have it. 6 off the wall, almost painful facts about the spending frenzy that the United States government has gotten itself into. They’re interesting, the numbers are huge and, like I’ve talked about before, they’re only going to continue to get larger if the debt issue isn’t resolved. Until tomorrow, spend smart, save smart!