Q. In one of your pieces, you discuss the National debt being over ten trillion dollars. We hear about our debt in the media all the time. The government will pay the debt with all the money we send them. Is there any doubt that with the population at over 300 million, ten trillion is not manageable? Without debt our economy wouldn’t be what it is today! Debt creates growth in our communities and it creates jobs!

A. There are good forms of debt. When an individual, a company or a government uses debt to build a home, build a manufacturing plant or build roads the debt has underlying assets. The debt was created to improve the future. Good forms of debt are also buying a home or a reliable vehicle to transport us to and from our places of employment.

Our National debt has been rising non traditionally fast over the last five years. Looking at the table, below, we notice our National debt was $2,350,276,890,953 in September of 1987. Thirteen years later we added about the same amount, bringing the National debt up to $5,674,178,209,886 in September of 2000.

• 09/30/2008 $10,024,724,896,912.49
• 09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48
• 09/30/2006 $8,693,742,553,848.46
• 09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50
• 09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32
• 09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62
• 09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16
• 09/28/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06
• 09/29/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86
• 09/30/1999 $5,656,270,901,615.43
• 09/30/1998 $5,526,193,008,897.62
• 09/30/1997 $5,413,146,011,397.34
• 09/30/1996 $5,224,810,939,135.73
• 09/29/1995 $4,973,982,900,709.39
• 09/30/1994 $4,692,749,910,013.32
• 09/30/1993 $4,411,488,883,139.38
• 09/30/1992 $4,064,620,655,521.66
• 09/30/1991 $3,665,303,351,697.03
• 09/28/1990 $3,233,313,451,777.25
• 09/29/1989 $2,857,430,960,187.32
• 09/30/1988 $2,602,337,712,041.16
• 09/30/1987 $2,350,276,890,953.00

SOURCE: BUREAU OF THE PUBLIC DEBT

The National Debt is $10,553,114,664,691.60 (Source: Bureau of Public Debt, December, 2008)

In only five years we added about another $2,250,000,000,000 bringing the total to $7,932,709,661,723 by September of 2005. And today it’s $10,553,114,664,691.60.

This figure doesn’t take into consideration the interest we’ll be paying on the debt. It doesn’t factor the fifty- three trillion, mentioned in the October 4, 2004 USA Today article. It suggests we overlook the debt obligations of the U.S. Government owed for Social Security, Medicare and the government pensions. They based the monstrous fifty-three trillion dollars on the people alive now, who’ll draw at some point on these systems.

A Quick Tip:
What’s A Trillion Dollars?

We talk about a trillion like it’s nothing. What’s a trillion dollars?

A trillion is one million, million dollars.

One trillion is written as the number “1″ followed by 12 zeros (1,000,000,000,000).

One trillion seconds of ordinary time = 31,546 years.

Take our greenbacks, no matter the denomination, the paper measures .005 inches. That’s 5 thousandths of an inch. If you take 200 bills and multiply them by .005, it equals one inch. Let’s make the bills $100 dollar bills, to make our calculations easier, and come up with a multiplier everyone can understand, to get the full impact.

1 bill is .005″ x 200 = 1″

Knowing the number and the value of 1″ thick stack of $100.00 bills, we can do some multiplying:

1,000 bills are 5″ high x $100.00 = $100,000.00 (one hundred thousand dollars)

10,000 bills x $100.00 = $1,000,000.00 (1 million dollars)

10,000,000 (ten million) bills {are 5000″ high (416.666 feet)} x $100.00 = (1 billion dollars)

10,000,000,000 (ten billion) bills {are 5,000,000″ (416,666 feet = 78.914 miles)}x $100.00 = $1,000,000,000,000.00 (1 trillion dollars)

10 billion $100.00 bills stacked flat is 78.914 miles high = $1,000,000,000,000.00 (1 trillion dollars)

Our National debt is over ten trillion so our pile of National debt, placing the hundred dollar bills flat on top of each other, would measure just over 790 miles high.

While I believe in good debt, a 790 mile high pile of hundred dollar bills seems like a lot of debt to me. And knowing how government works, maybe this isn’t ALL good debt?

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