This debt obligation comes out to nearly $53,000 if every person living in the U.S., including children and unemployed had to pay a share, according to a Harvard Report, titled 2012 Annual Report of the USA.
If the last few weeks on Capitol Hill has taught us anything, it’s that Washington doesn’t have the best concept of living within your means.
Last night’s 11th-hour deal raised the country’s borrowing limit to avoid a possible default on our payments. When Congress passes laws that require spending, the Treasury Department is tasked with providing the funds, but when they don’t have the cash from tax revenues to cover the expenditures, it forced to borrow money—and that’s where we’ve gotten in trouble.
To put our country’s debt situation into perspective, if every working American had to pay their share of the $16.7 trillion debt in 2012, they would be shelling out $123,000.
The national debt is on schedule to hit $17 trillion in the next few weeks, up from $10.6 trillion when President Obama took office in 2009.
This debt obligation comes out to nearly $53,000 if every person living in the U.S., including children and unemployed had to pay a share, according to a Harvard Report, titled 2012 Annual Report of the USA.
Barry Bosworth, economist at the Brookings Institution, says up until the 2009 financial crisis, debt was a falling share of GDP, which was sustainable. While a deal was reached to avoid hitting the debt ceiling, it’s only a short-term solution, and the current debt-to-income ratio in the U.S. is at about 70%, according to Bosworth.
[…]
