in the US. Every person. Family of 4 owes $252,000
That's if we spread it out evenly.
But even if we took ALL the money from the top 1000 richest people... it wouldn't change this math significantly (it would take 10 Jeff Bezos type wealth to get to 5% of the total debt).
The amazing thing is that the world (China, Europe, and the US) keeps lending us more money because we DO pay the interest on the debt.
Yes, we should pay down the debt to something like 8 trillion or so (from the current 20). Over the next 40 years... assuming no more recessions.
The Democrats are accused of being tax and spend... the repukes are spend and spend more and cut revenues.
That is because they really want to bankrupt the Federal government so they can finally achieve their multi-generational dream of eliminating Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.
The only time in the last 40 years that the federal government ran a surplus was in the last years of the Clinton administration. And it wasn't much of a surplus... and immediately we let Bush steal the election and he instituted a tax cut. The 2008 financial crises really sealed the deal on the debt.
I think that when we are facing a recession, the government (at all levels) should borrow money (a deficit) and spend like crazy on things like infrastructure... and when the economy is cooking along and doing well, the government should reduce spending and pay down the debt. That is what would smooth out the economic cycles instituted by herd mentality of capitalism. That is what we did in the 1930s... through the early 1960s. But somewhere along the way we lost that discipline.
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