Ryan Streeter
Last Friday, Dustin Siggins and I argued in an op-ed in the Examiner that if more Americans understood just how big and bad our federal debt has become, we might see more efforts to drum up the political will to reform entitlements - our biggest long-term debt drivers.
Americans are used to hearing massive and incomprehensible figures such as $14 trillion when talking about the debt. But we decided to put it all in perspective by bringing the debt figure down to the ground. What is it per worker? Per couple?
We had some figures in the piece, but we also had quite a bit more based on original research using BLS and Treasury figures (Dustin gets the credit for running the numbers). I wanted to lay some of those out here so that readers can get a full sense of the debt picture. These numbers are pretty scary.
We have collected these figures in a chart that you can view here.
Here's a summary of some main points, both from the op-ed and in the chart.
- A couple's share of the national debt was $8,200 50 years ago, is $202,000 today, and will reach $320,000 by 2021.
- By 2021, the federal debt will be more than 4.5 times the size it was just 20 years earlier.
- Between 1961 and 1981, federal revenue climbed as a percentage of national debt from 33 percent to 60 percent, but it has dropped since then to 27 percent in 2005 and 17 percent in 2011.
- The debt per American worker in 1961 was $4,101. In 1981, it was $9,182. In 2001, it was $40,404. Today, it is $101,150. And in 2021, ten years from now, it will be $161,631.
- In 1981 our national debt as a percentage of of GDP was 32%. It will be 102% by the end of this year.
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