Most of the political news these days is centered around talk of the national debt and raising the debt ceiling.
But, rarely is there much talk about exactly how big a problem this is given the enormous size of our national debt.
According to the
U.S. Treasury, the official size of the Total Public Debt Outstanding as of July 11, 2011 was $14,342,977,065,892.73.
That obviously looks like a big number, but just how much money is that?
- Using current gas prices, you could buy enough gas to drive a Toyota Prius to the planet Saturn and back 124,000 times – if there were a highway there. (And you'd still have enough money left over for snacks, tolls and souvenirs.)
- Using 2010 attendance figures and average ticket prices, you could buy every ticket to every major league baseball game (all 30 MLB clubs), plus a hot dog, bottled water, peanuts and cracker jack at each game, for about the next 5,000 seasons.
- If Mark Zuckerberg were to thank President Obama for using Facebook as a campaign medium by offering to pay off the national debt, he'd have to charge each of Facebook's reported 750 million users about $19,000 apiece for the privilege of having a page. (But, don't expect them to 'like' it.)
- The state budget recently signed into law here in Massachusetts is worth $30.6 billion. If we had the national debt as a funding source, we could run Massachusetts tax-free until the year 2479 or so.
- According to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, the equalized valuation of all taxable property in Massachusetts is about $1.024 trillion. So, basically, you could use the national debt to buy Massachusetts and you'd still have a cool $13 trillion or so left over to start buying up other states.
You can find more staggering figures in
this recent article from the Daily Mail.
American needs to get immediate control over its burgeoning national debt, with all sides participating in solving the problem long-term.
