America’s Growing Pile of Debt

America’s debt is ridiculous.

Not too long ago, the United States of America’s debt surpassed 13 trillion dollars. Yes, I said 13,000,000,000,000. Once you look at the numbers, it doesn’t look so bad right? Well that’s true, but that’s also a bunch of zeros. While checking my email this morning, I noticed an article on MSN.com titled The National Debt: What 13 Trillion Could Buy. The article provides comical relief to the realism of America’s debt. The article states that the debt will be greater than America’s GDP in 2010 and that the debt figures out to be roughly 42,000 dollars per citizen. At the rate of the median pay of 41,056, America’s 139 million workers would have to set aside 3% of their income for 76 years to pay off the debt. The article also goes on to discuss ten things that the 13 trillion dollars could buy if it weren’t debt. Here is the list of what America could buy with 13 trillion dollars:

1) 9 32gb iPhones for the world’s 6.8 billion people
2) 128 million Telsa Roadsters for 128 million lucky people
3) 309 million one dollar items a day from McDonald’s for 115 years
4) Yale room and board ($190,000/ 4yrs on average) for 68 million people – 91% of America’s 18& under population
5) 65 million new homes, median home value currently being 198,500
6) 11 first class trips from Washington D.C. to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for America’s 309 million population
7) A movie a day for every person in the U.S.A for 14 years
8) 10 years of around the clock, on call medical help for 928 million people, or the population of the United States could be covered for 30 years
9) British Petroleum’s 20 billion set aside for cleanup could be paid 600x over
10) America’s 309 million population could spend the next 60 years at Disney World

Now, I’m not sure about the rest of everyone, I could certainly use 9 iPhones; one for business, one for pleasure, one for…..the internet, one for a dog toy I guess? I’m not sure what to do with the other 5. Now, I know this is just stating how bad America’s debt is growing to be, but I’d like to see more real world applications such as #4 or 8. I’d like to see what we could do for social programs not how much McDonald’s we can buy; although it sure makes me hungry! Who knows, McDonald’s is probably paying the author to write it in. Anyhow, America’s debt is turning into a very serious issue; not that it wasn’t before, but it seems to be growing exponentially.

What are we going to do as a nation to solve this problem? Surely we can’t continue to borrow money that we can’t pay back. We are practically owned by countries such as China because of the ridiculous amount of money we owe them. If our debt surpasses our GDP, how are we going to pay off our debt? Of course we could always borrow money to pay off our debts. Oh wait, we’ll still owe money, so what are we going to do? That’s why we have economists, financial analysts, and amazingly smart other people. Each individual will have their own style, and of course there are going to be individuals that don’t like that style, but I think people should look at it this way: it’s not like the people in charge are trying to screw America over. They are doing their best to change what others have dug us into. People expect results right away. People need to understand that these things take time. We can’t change the economy instantly.

We’ll figure it out, America has endured much worse.