Ed Hall's wonderful debt clock translates how much each citizen of this county owes on the National Debt. This is the figure due from every man, woman, and child in the United States.
The daily figures should be interpreted in at least three ways further:
Naturally, if you have a family of four, your family amount due is about $80,000 as of January 1, l997.
It would be unfair to expect children under 18 or the elderly retired people to come up with this money. So readjust the amount you owe by dividing the approximately 136 million people currently working into today's debt total. See what you get now for your share of the bill. When are you going to pay up?
In all fairness, it should be mentioned that the National Debt is not held entirely by American citizens. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that about 14% is held by "foreign" countries, banks, companies or individuals. Of course, they do not know how much of this might be with American companies doing business outside the United States and buying Treasury paper through local banks and institutions or setting up 401(k)s for their employees. Anyway, you can knock off a little as somebody else's risk or collection problem.
Some establishment economists will tell you that figures which simply divide the national debt by the number of citizens in our country or the number of working people who will have to pay the bill are not accurate; that different people pay different taxes and the wealthy pay far more than the poor. This, of course, is true. However, the establishment spin doctors will attempt to cast this fact in a light favorable to them. They will attempt to use it to insinuate that the less wealthy do not have as much to worry about as do the rich; that the problem is not really as bad as "alarmists" make it seem, or that the average man should not worry so much. The truth is that THE PAIN IS THE SAME. When the poor man must give up a few dollars of his earnings, it's just as painful to him as it is for the rich man to give up thousands. Do not fall for this "spin" garbage.
If a homeless person must give the government the dollar he mooched today, it hurts just as much as it does for the rich man to give the government the money he earned on the stock market during the same day.
P.S. The reason figures fluctuate up and down on the Treasury's " Debt to the penny " page is that the U.S. Treasury is constantly buying and selling it's paper. They hold auctions on bonds, bills, etc., 12 to 15 times a month. On the days when they are buying back thousands of "matured" papers, on those days the debt goes down. On those days the Treasury has actually made a payment against the debt. They sell more as fast as they can. After all, a payment against the debt would take more cash from the yearly budget.
Interest payments happen the same way. Every day interest must be paid on paper issued years ago but not yet matured.This is also the reason any change in interest rates would have an immediate effect on the federal government.
