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GET PREMIUMThe unbelievable level of us federal debt.
As of writing this today, the United States (US) Federal Debt currently stands at $31.6 trillion per its records. That’s an awful lot of debt. The US Federal Government have even provided an online debt clock so that anyone can check it and see how it’s growing, should they need to. But what does this really mean? Can we even get a grasp of this huge figure? To be clearer, let us write this figure out in full. That would be $31,625,261,689,250 which works out at roughly $94,047 per head of the US population. And to get a better handle on $31.6 trillion, think of this example; a thousand seconds is about 16 minutes and 42 seconds, and a million seconds is about 11 and 1/2 days. A billion seconds is about 31 years and 9 months, and a trillion seconds is about 31,700 years. Now imagine 31.6 trillion, which would be just over one million years. And we started with a thousand seconds. This amount of debt begs several questions and let us begin with this one. Is it a good idea for the US (or any country, for that matter) to be running up so much debt? This basically means that other parties (mainly countries in this case) are financing its lifestyle. Or to put it another way, the US is living beyond its means. Let us begin with a touch of culture and see what a famous playwright had to say about this way of living. In Hamlet, William Shakespeare gives these words of advice concerning debt,
