Five Fun Facts About the $14 Trillion National Debt

[jemelanson]

Five Fun Facts About the $14 Trillion National Debt

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on March 24, 2011, Printed on March 25, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150371/

Our public debt – now at around $14 trillion dollars ($14,233,559,283,692.40 as of this writing, to be precise) – has been in the news lately, but how we accrued it, who holds it and whether it represents a problem are not well understood.

In one sense, for better or worse, our growing public debt has put trillions into the pockets of the American people. There's an economic principle known as “Wagner’s law,” which holds that as a country gets wealthier, its tax burden tends to increase. Wagner’s law makes perfect sense: in a poor country, citizens are happy to have a paved road; in a middle-income country, they expect a public school on that road; and in the wealthiest countries in the world, the public expects safe air-traffic control to guide them into an airport where they can catch a cab to a world-class public university. As the expectations of what we want government to do rise, so do the tax revenues that are necessary to pay for it all.

Interesting read. Not something that any of the news/noise channels are talking about.

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[liberalla]

2. Good info to have on hand!

Thanks for posting.

K & R