Each American owes $30,000 if you divide up the public debt. The new baby you just welcomed into the world? well, he owes $30K already! So this post from CalculatedRisk made me look up the actual numbers.รย Then I discovered that the Treasury Dept has been publishing the total public debt number daily since Jan 1993.รย Here is the quick comparison I made using ManyEyes.
If you want to get the whole data set and the rise of this humongous number, see the daily figures here as data set and line graph.
I understand this bailout should happen or must happen or whatever but really can we start freaking taxing the rich?
One other note, I don’t know how Americans see debt. I hate debt, in any shape or form. I know it’s a bit extreme and may be slightly irrational.รย People claim there is good debt such as mortgage. Even so, I still hate debt. So guess how much of the national budget is used to pay the interest for this public debt of 10 Trillion?
Here is your answer : 16.194%, which is equivalent to 8 times what the government spends on education (~2%). So last year, $4858 of my fed tax payment went to China as interest. excellent right?
Thank you George W Bush, I am waiting for Jan 20th 2009. And it better not be ‘that old dude’ who wants to keep Bush tax cuts and make them permanent giving the inaugural address.
2 responses to “Public Debt about to hit 10 Trillion $$$”
I finally decided to write a comment on your blog. I just wanted to say good job. I really enjoy reading your posts.
Let me just say, I thoroughly enjoyed your post.
Although, I would have liked you to use the un-rounded figure of your last year fed tax paid. The reason is that, in my opinion, some readers perhaps may be distracted by the fact that this figure is coincidently the same as the approximate public debt per capita figure mentioned earlier in the post.
May be I’m the only person who gets distracted easily by some minute data context.